from her clasped her to his breast, a victor in a
breath. As, regardless of the possible invasion of interlopers, he took
her in his embrace, she felt with satisfaction once more the grasp of
masculine arms. She let her head fall on his shoulder in delighted
contentment. While he murmured in succession inarticulate terms of
endearment, she revelled in the thrill of her nerves and approved her
own sagacious and commendable behavior.

"Dearest," she whispered, "you are right. We are right. Since we love
each other, why should we not say so? I love you--I love you. The ugly
hateful past shall not keep us apart longer. You say you loved me from
the first; so did I love you, though I did not know it then. We were
meant for each other--God meant us--did he not? It is right, and we
shall be so happy, Wilbur."

"Yes, Selma." Words seemed to him an inadequate means for expressing his
emotions. He pressed his lips upon hers with the adoring respect of a
worshipper touching his god, yet with the energy of a man. She sighed
and compared him in her thought with Babcock. How gentle this new lover!
How refined and sensitive and appreciative! How intelligent and
gentlemanly!

"If I had my wish, darling," he said, "we should be married to-night and
I would carry you away from here forever."

She remembered that Babcock had uttered the same wish on the occasion
when he had offered himself. To grant it then had been out of the
question. To do so now would be convenient--a prompt and satisfactory
blotting out of her past and present life--a happy method of solving
many minor problems of ways and means connected with waiting to be
married. Besides it would be romantic, and a delicious, fitting crowning
of her present blissful mood.

He mistook her silence for womanly scruples, and he recounted with a
little laugh the predicament in which he should find himself on his own
account were they to be so precipitate. "What would my sister think if
she were to get a telegram--'Married to-night. Expect us to-morrow?' She
would think I had lost my senses. So I have, darling; and you are the
cause. She knows about you. I have talked to her about you."

"But she thinks I am Mrs. Babcock."

"Oh yes. Ha! ha! It would never do to state to whom I was married,
unless I sent a telegram as long as my arm. Dear Pauline! She will be
radiant. It is all arranged that she is to stay where she is in the old
quarters, and I am to take you to a new house. We'