delay she was fervently grateful, and forgetful of all else she leaned
back in a big old walnut chair and abandoned herself completely to her
happiness, which might perhaps be all too brief. They talked of a
thousand things--talk full of mutual confession: of their former
hostility, of what it was that had drawn their love to one another, of
last night out in the storm. The spirits of both ran high. Their joy,
as first joy should be, was sparkling, effervescent.

After a time she sat in silence for several moments, smiling
half-tenderly, half-roguishly, into his rugged, square-hewed face,
with its glinting glasses and its _chevaux de frise_ of bristling
hair.

"Well," he demanded, "what are you thinking about?"

"I was thinking what very bad eyes I have."

"Bad eyes?"

"Yes. For up to yesterday I always considered you----But perhaps you
are thin-skinned about some matters?"

"Me thin-skinned? I've got the epidermis of a crocodile!"

"Well, then--up to yesterday I always thought you--but you're sure you
won't mind?"

"I tell you I'm so thick-skinned that it meets in the middle!"

"Well, then, till yesterday I always thought you rather ugly."

"Glory be! Eureka! Excelsior!"

"Then you don't mind?"

"Mind?" cried he. "Did you think that I thought I was pretty?"

"I didn't know," she replied with her provoking, happy smile, "for men
are such conceited creatures."

"I'm not authorized to speak for the rest, but I'm certainly
conceited," he returned promptly. "For I've always believed myself one
of the ugliest animals in the whole human menagerie. And at last my
merits are recognized."

"But I said 'till yesterday'," she corrected. "Since then, somehow,
your face seems to have changed."

"Changed?"

"Yes. I think you are growing rather good-looking." Behind her happy
raillery was a tone of seriousness.

"Good-looking? Me good-looking? And that's the way you dash my hopes!"

"Yes, sir. Good-looking."

"Woman, you don't know what sorrow is in those words you spoke! Just
to think," he said mournfully, "that all my life I've fondled the
belief that when I was made God must have dropped the clay while it
was still wet."

"I'm sorry----"

"Don't try to comfort me. The blow's too heavy." He slowly shook his
head. "I never loved a dear gazelle----"

"Oh, I don't mean the usual sort of good-looking," she consoled him.
"But good-looking like an engine, or a crag, or a mountain."

"Well, at any rate," he