news, that even through her happy ejaculations the tears rained down
her own cheeks. She tried to wipe them away and discovered, absurdly
enough, that she had lost her handkerchief. "Aren't we idiots!" she
cried in a voice of joyful quavers. "I never understood before
why everybody cries at a wedding. See here, Arnold, I've lost my
handkerchief. Loan me yours." She pulled his handkerchief out of his
pocket, she wiped her eyes, she put a sisterly kiss on his thin,
sallow cheek, she cried: "You dears! Isn't it too good to be true!
Arnold! So soon! Inside two weeks! How ever could you have the
courage? Judith! My Judith! Why, she never looked at a man before. How
did you dare?"

His overmastering fit of emotion was passed now. His look was of
white, incredulous exaltation. "We saw each other and ran into
each other's arms," he said; "I didn't have to 'dare.' It was like
breathing."

"Oh, how perfect!" she cried, "how simply, simply perfect!" and now
there was for an instant a note of wistful envy in her voice. "It's
_all_ perfect! She never so much as looked at a man before, and you
said the other night you'd never been in love before."

Arnold looked at her wildly. "I said that!" he cried.

"Why, yes, don't you remember, after that funny, joking talk with me,
you said that was the nearest you'd ever come to proposing to any
girl?"

"God Almighty!" cried the man, and did not apologize for the
blasphemy. He looked at her fixedly, as though unguessed-at horizons