of
the sunshade round and round, and strove womanfully to keep her thoughts
fixed on the subject on hand, and away from that thrilling "when I
marry." "But it isn't only _form_, you know," she added anxiously!
"It's caring for it most of all, and putting it before everything else!"

Geoffrey gazed at her in a rapture of admiration. He loved her
simplicity; he adored her earnestness. In his eyes she was a shining
white angel sent down from heaven to be his guide through life. It
needed all his self-control to keep back the words which were struggling
for utterance, but the fear of frightening Elma by a premature
declaration gave him strength to resist.

They turned instead into a prayer, a sincere yet bargain-making prayer,
like that of Jacob of old.

"Give me this woman!" cried the inner voice: "this one woman out of all
the world, and I will vow in return my faith, my allegiance!" The most
earnest vows are often offered in the least conventional language, and
Geoffrey Greville was not a man to promise without intending to perform.
There was a long, pregnant silence. Elma felt the presence of
electricity in the air, and forced herself to return to the attack.

"And there are other things! ... You play bridge--"

"Certainly I do!"

"For money?"

"Shilling points."

"What are `points'?"

Geoffrey laughed happily. This innocence sounded fascinating in his
infatuated ears.

"That's a little difficult to explain, isn't it, if you don't know
anything about the game? Don't you play cards at all?"

"Mother won't have them in the house. We have `Quartettes,' but they
are different. ... Can you lose much at shilling points?"

"A fair amount, if you're unlucky, but you can win it, too! I generally
do win, as a matter of fact!"

"What is the most you ever lost in a night?"

Geoffrey grimaced expressively.

"Sixty pounds; but I was a fool, and doubled no trumps on a risky hand,
on the chance of making the rubber. That was quite an exceptional
drop!"

"I should hope so, indeed!" Elma's horror was genuinely unassumed.
"Sixty pounds! Why, it's more than many a poor family has to live on
all the year round! Think of all the good you could do with sixty
pounds! It seems awful to lose it on cards in one evening!"

"The next sixty pounds I win, I'll give to a workmen's charity! Will
that wipe away my offence?"

Elma was not at all sure that it would. Money won in unworthy fashion
could never brin