became a mass of sodden humility. Could he have known how much Polly
Kirkland envied and admired his depth of feeling, entirely apart from
the fact that she herself inspired that feeling, how greatly she wished
to care for him in the way he cared for her, life, even alone in the
silences of Lone Lake, would have been a beautiful and blessed thing.
But he was so sure she was the most charming and most wonderful girl in
all the world, and he an unworthy and despicable being, that when the
lady demurred, he faltered, and his pleading, at least to his own ears,
carried no conviction.

"When one thinks of being married," said Polly Kirkland gently, "it
isn't a question of the man you can live with, but the man you can't
live without. And I am sorry, but I've not found that man."

"I suppose," returned Ainsley gloomily, "that my not being able to live
without you doesn't affect the question in the least?"

"You _have_ lived without me," Miss Kirkland pointed out reproachfully,
"for thirty years."

"Lived!" almost shouted Ainsley. "Do you call _that_ living? What was I
before I met you? I was an ignorant beast of the field. I knew as much
about living as one of the cows on my farm. I could sleep twelve hours
at a stretch, or, if I was in New York, I _never_ slept. I was a Day and
Night Bank of health and happiness, a great, big, useless puppy. And now
I can't sleep, can't eat, can't think--except of you. I dream about you
all night, think about you all day, go through the woods calling your
name, cutting your initials in tree trunks, doing all the fool things a
man does when he's in love, and I am the most miserable man in the
world--and the happiest!"