you would remember what I had asked you.
There would be a sort of flaw, and you would discover it--and that would
be the end."

"Is it so delicate as that?" she asked.

"It is the frailest thing in the world--and the strongest," he answered,
with his thoughtful smile. "It is a very delicate sort of--thought,
which is given to two people to take care of. And they never seem to
succeed in keeping it even passably intact--and not one couple in a
million carry it through life unhurt. And the injuries never come from
the outer world, but from themselves."

"Where did you learn all that?" she asked, looking at him with her
shrewd, smiling eyes.

"You taught me."

"But you have a terribly high ideal."

"Yes."

"Are you sure you do not expect the impossible?"

"Quite."

She shook her head doubtfully.

"Are you sure you will never have to compromise? All the world
compromises."

"With its conscience," said Cartoner. "And look at the result."

"Then you are good," she returned, looking at him with a speculative
gravity, "as well as concise--and rather masterful."

"It is clear," he said, "that a man who persuades a woman to marry
against her inclination, or her conviction, or her conscience, is
seeking her unhappiness and his own."

"Ah!" she cried. "But you ask for a great deal."

"I ask for love."

"And," she said, going past that question, "no obstacles."

"No obstacles that both could not conscientiously face and set aside."

"And if one such object--quite a small one--should be found?"

"Then they must be content with love alone."

Wanda turned from him, and fell into thought for some moments. They
seemed to be feeling their way forward on that difficult road where so
many hasten and such numbers fall.

"You have a way," she said, "of putting into words--so few words--what
others only half think, and do not half attempt to act up to. If they
did--there would, perhaps, be no marriages."

"There would be no unhappy ones," said Cartoner.

"And it is better to be content with love alone?"

"Content," was his sole answer.

Again she thought in silence for quite a long time, although their
moments were so few. A clock on the mantel-piece struck half-past ten.
Cartoner had bidden Joseph P. Mangles good-night only half an hour
earlier, and his life had been in peril--he had been down to the depths
and up to the heights since then. When the gods arrive they act quickly.

"So that is your creed," sh