turn, because she's apt to be lonesome in London. She's the widow of
a Spanish Count, and has lived in the Argentine, but I met her in New
York. She knows all about me--or enough--and if she'd been in the
restaurant at dinner this evening she could have done for me what you
did. I had reason to think she would be there when I bolted in to get
out of a fix. But she was missing. Are you sorry?"

"If she'd been there, you would have gone to her table and sat down, and
we--should never have met!" Annesley thought aloud. "How strange! Just
that _little_ thing--your friend being out to dinner--and our whole lives
are to be changed. Oh, _you_ must be sorry?"

"I tell you, meeting you and winning you in this way is worth the best
ten years of my life. But you haven't answered my question."

"I'll answer it now!" cried the girl. "Meeting you is worth _all_ the
years of my life! I'm not much of a princess, but you _are_ St. George."

"St. George!" he echoed, a ring of bitterness under his laugh. "That's
the first time I've been called a saint, and I'm afraid it will be the
last. I can't live up to that, but--if I can give you a happy life, and
a few of the beautiful things you deserve, why, it's _something_!
Besides, I'm going to worship my princess. I'd give anything to show you
how I--but no. I was good before, when I was tempted to kiss you. You're
at my mercy now, in a way, all the more because I'm taking you from your
old existence to one you don't know.

"I sha'n't ask to kiss you--except maybe your little hand if you don't
mind--until the moment you're my wife. Meantime, I'll try to grow a bit
more like what your lover ought to be; and later I shall kiss you enough