After a while, after we'd talked and talked, and they'd told me things
and I'd told them things, I said I'd consent.

"But if the love ever gives out, I'm not going to stay with you," I
said. "I'm never going to be fashionable and not care for love. A home
without it is hell."

"Mercy, Mary!" Uncle Parke jumped. "Don't use such strong language. It
isn't nice."

"But it's true. I read it in a book, and I've watched the Rices. When
there's love enough you can stand anything. When there isn't, you can
stand nothing. Living together every day you find out a lot you didn't
know, and love can't keep still. It's got to grow or die."

Then I jumped up. "I always could talk a lot about things I didn't
understand," I said. "But I consent." And I flew down the road and left
them.

I've written it out on a piece of paper, about their being engaged, and
looked at it by night and by day since they told me about it. I've said
it low, and I've said it loud, but I can't realize it, and the little
sense the Lord gave me He has taken away.

They say I did it. Say I'm responsible for every bit of it, and that I
will have to look after them all the rest of their lives to see that I
didn't make a mistake in writing that letter. And that I'm to go to
Europe with them on their wedding tour and live with them always and
always. And--oh!--I believe my heart is going to burst with miserable
happiness and happy miserableness, and my head feels like it's in a