e was suddenly startled; "what a darned little thing can throw the
switches for a man! Because I didn't get by in Math. D and Ec 2, and had
to crawl out to Mercer to cram with old Bradley--I met you! Eleanor!
Isn't it wonderful? A little thing like that--just falling down in
mathematics--changed my whole life?" The wild gayety in his eyes
sobered. "I happened to come to Mercer--and, you are my wife." His
fingers, holding the little grassy ring, trembled; but the next instant
he threw himself back on the grass, and kicked up his heels in a
preposterous gesture of ecstasy. Then caught her hand, slipped the
braided ring over that plain circle of gold which had been on her finger
for fifty-four minutes, kissed it--and the palm of her hand--and said,
"You never can escape me! Eleanor, your voice played the deuce with me.
I rushed home and read every poem in my volume of Blake. Go on; give us
the rest."

She smiled;

".... And let our winds
Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste
Thy morn and evening breath!..."

"Oh--_stop_! I can't bear it," he said, huskily; and, turning on his
face, he kissed the grass, earth's "perfumed garment," snow-sprinkled
with locust blossoms....

But the moment of passion left him serious. "When I think of Mrs.
Newbolt," he said, "I could commit murder." In his own mind he was
saying, "I've rescued her!"

"Auntie doesn't mean to be unkind," Eleanor explained, simply; "only,
she never understood me--Maurice! Be careful! There's a little
ant--don't step on it."

She made him pause in his diatribe against Mrs. Newbolt and move his
heel while she pushed the ant aside with a clover blossom. Her anxious
gentleness made him laugh, but it seemed to him perfectly beautiful.
Then he went on about Mrs. Newbolt:

"Of course she couldn't understand _you_! You might as well expect a
high-tempered cow to understand a violin solo."

"How mad she'd be to be called a cow! Oh, Maurice, do you suppose she's
got my letter by this time? I left it on her bureau. She'll rage!"

"Let her rage. Nothing can separate us now."

Thus they dismissed Mrs. Newbolt, and the shock she was probably
experiencing at that very moment, while reading Eleanor's letter
announcing that, at thirty-nine, she was going to marry this very young
man.

"No; nothing can part us," Eleanor said; "forever and ever." And again
they were silent--islanded in rippling tides of wind-blown grass, with
the warm fragrance of