he said, with a low laugh.

"I don't want to avoid you," answered Georgiana, and let her eyes meet
his fairly for an instant. She could not yet do this in a quite casual
way.

He crossed his arms upon her knee, sitting in a boyish attitude and
looking not unlike a big boy for the moment, for all the lines of care
were gone from his face in the soft firelight, and happiness had laid
its rosy mantle over his shoulders as over hers. He began to speak
rather quickly:

"For the life of me, I can't think of a reason why you should go back
and spend a winter in the same old grind, waiting till spring
and--making me wait till spring. Why should anybody wait till spring?
I've let you talk about all the work you were going to do this winter at
home, but that was just because I didn't want to make you feel as if you
were caught in a trap. I had an idea that for a few hours, anyhow, it
might seem enough of a change to come down here and promise to marry a
perfect stranger of a surgeon instead of the 'literary light' you knew.
I thought we'd let it go at that for those few hours. But now--it
doesn't seem to me possible to go back to bachelorhood again, even with
such a prospect before me in the spring. Not after having tasted--this.
Georgiana, why must I?"

Her face was the colour of her roses. There was no getting away from the
challenge of those eyes that watched her so steadily--not even by
following his suggestion and gazing persistently ceilingward. Craig
glanced at Father Davy, to find that his soft blue eyes showed no sign
of shock, and that his face was perfectly placid as he looked and
listened.

The younger man went on, coming straight to the point: "Georgiana, marry
me before you go back! You've promised to stay a week. Let's have a
wedding here, next Wednesday. Then we'll leave Father Davy here
comfortably with Mrs. MacFayden, and run up to see about getting things
packed and shipped. I'll take that much of a vacation now. Then, in
April, we'll go abroad for a real honeymoon and take Father Davy with
us. I'd propose that now, but the seas are stormy in December and
January and we mustn't risk it for him. But, let's not wait! Why should
we? Now, honestly, why should we?"

The girl turned her face, with a strange little look of appeal, toward
her father, to meet such a look of entire comprehension as stirred her
to the depths. Suddenly, obeying an impulse she did not understand, she
drew herself gently away from C