You--you love me?"

Looking down at her dropped, velvety lashes, feeling the warm
strong beat of her heart against his, holding close as he did all
her glowing and fragrant beauty, Warren Gregory felt it the most
exquisite moment of his life. Her youth, her history, her
wonderful poise and sureness so intoxicatingly linked with all a
girl's unexpected shyness and adorable uncertainties, all these
combined to enthrall the man who had admired her for many years
and loved her for more than one.

"Love you?" he asked, claiming again the lips she yielded with
such a delicious widening of her eyes and quickening of breath.

"You see, Warren," she said presently, "I'm not a girl. I give
myself to you with a knowledge and a joy no girl could possibly
have. I don't want to coquette and delay. I want to be your wife,
and to learn your faults, and have you learn mine, and settle down
into harness--one year, five years--ten years married! Oh, you
don't know how I LONG to be ten years married. I shan't mind a bit
being nearly forty. Forty--doesn't it sound SETTLED, and sedate--
and that's what I want. I--I shall love getting gray, and feeling
that you and I don't care so much about going places, don't you
know? We'll like better just being home together, won't we? We're
older than most people now, aren't we?"

He laughed aloud at the bright face so enchantingly young in its
restored beauty. He had expected to find her charming, but in this
new phase of girlishness, of happiness, she was a thousand times
more charming than he had dreamed. It was hard to believe that