"Look here, Harry, if an engagement for two years is tedious to you--"

"Of course it is tedious. Is not waiting for anything always tedious?
There's nothing I hate so much as waiting."

"But listen to me," said she, gravely. "If it is too tedious, if it is
more than you think you can bear without being unhappy, I will release
you from your engagement."

"Florence!"

"Hear me to the end. It will make no change in me and then if you like
to come to me again at the end of the two years, you may be sure of the
way in which I shall receive you."

"And what good would that do?"

"Simply this good, that you would not be bound in a manner that makes
you unhappy. If you did not intend that when you asked me to be your
wife--Oh, Harry, all I want is to make you happy. That is all that I
care for, all that I think about?"

Harry swore to her with ten thousand oaths that he would not release her
from any part of her engagement with him, that he would give her no
loophole of escape from him, that he intended to hold her so firmly that
if she divided herself from him, she should be accounted among women a
paragon of falseness. He was ready, he said, to marry her to-morrow.
That was his wish, his idea of what would be best for both of them; and
after that, if not to-morrow, then on the next day, and so on till the