I want you all to myself, and all the time. Things
might happen. If I should die, for instance, before
I married you"--

"Oh, don't suppose such awful things," she
cried, putting her hand over his mouth.

He held it there and kissed it until she pulled it
away.

"I should consider," he resumed, completing the
sentence, "that my life had been a failure."

"If I should die," she murmured, "I should die
happy in the knowledge that you had loved me."

"In three weeks," he went on, "I shall have
finished my business in Clarence, and there will be
but one thing to keep me here. When shall it be?
I must take you home with me."

"I will let you know," she replied, with a troubled
sigh, "in a week from to-day."

"I'll call your attention to the subject every day
in the mean time," he asserted. "I shouldn't like
you to forget it."

Rena's shrinking from the irrevocable step of
marriage was due to a simple and yet complex