room. Martha was seated upon the davenport, nervously toying with her
fan. He saw with misgiving that she evidently expected something was
going to happen. Her eyes were downcast.

He stood silent and somewhat awed before her for many minutes, taking
the final puffs at an abbreviated cigarette. Then he abruptly sat down
at the opposite end of the couch. As he did so, she thought she heard
him mutter something about "one hundred and seventy, at the lowest."

"So many people have given up playing golf, Mr. Ten Eyck," she said.
"I am surprised that you keep it up."

"Golf?" he murmured blankly.

"Weren't you speaking of your score for the eighteen holes?"

He gazed at her helplessly for a moment, then set his jaw.

"Say, Martha," he began, in a high and unnatural treble, "I am a man
of few words. Will you marry me? Oh! Ouch! What the dickens are you
doing? O--oh! Don't jump at me like that!"

The details are painful and it isn't necessary to go into them.
Suffice it to say, she told him that he had always been her ideal and
that she had worshipped him from childhood's earliest days. He, on the
other hand, confessed, with more truth than she could have guessed,
that he had but recently come to a realisation of her true worth, and
what she really meant to him.

She set the wedding day for November the eleventh,--just seven weeks