," he ventured.

"But--anybody would think----"

"What would anybody think? Shall we keep to this side of the road? It's
quieter. What would anybody think?"

"Oh, silly things." Laura threw up her head with a half-laugh. "Things I
needn't mention."

Lindsay was silent for an instant. Then "Between us?" he asked, and she
nodded.

Their side of the street, along the square, was nearly empty. He found
her hand and drew it through his arm. "Would you mind so very much," he
said, "if those silly things were true?" He spoke as if to a child. His
passion was never more clearly a single object to him, divorced from all
complicating and non-essential impressions of her. "I would give all I
possess to have it so," he told her, catching at any old foolish phrase
that would serve.

"I don't believe you mean anything like all you say, Mr. Lindsay." Her
head was bent and she kept her hand within his arm. He seemed to be a
circumstance that brought her reminiscences of how one behaved
sentimentally toward a young man with whom there was no serious
entanglement. It is not surprising that he saw only one thing, walls
going down before him, was aware only of something like invitation.
Existence narrowed itself to a single glowing point; as he looked it
came so near that he bounded to meet it.

"Dear," he said, "you can't know--there is no way of telling you--what I
mean. I suppose every man feels the same thing about the woman he loves;
but it seems to me that my life had never known the sun until I saw you.
I can't explain to you how poor it was, and I won't try; but I fancy God
sends every one of us, if we know it, some one blessed chance, and He
did more for me--He lifted the veil of my stupidity and let me see it,
passing by in its halo, trailing clouds of glory. I don't want to make
you understand, though--I want to make you promise. I want to be
absolutely sure from to-night that you'll marry me. Say that you'll
marry me--say it before we get to the crossing. Say it, Laura." She
listened to his first words with a little half-controlled smile, then
made as if she would withdraw her hand, but he held it with his own, and
she heard him through, walking beside him formally in her bare feet, and
looking carefully at the asphalt pavement as they do in Putney.

"I don't object to your calling me by my given name," she said when he
had done, "but it can't go any further than that, Mr. Lindsay, and you
ought not to bring God into