e must go home.

"I'll drive you back," said Maurice.

"Hearse or hansom, sir?" Castleton asked.

"Good night, Fuz," said Jenny on the pavement. "I'll bring Madge and
Maudie to see you some time soon."

"Do," he answered. "They would invigorate even a sleepy pear. Good
night, dear Jenny, and pray send Maurice back in a pleasanter mood."

For a few minutes the lovers drove along in silence.

It was Maurice who spoke first:

"Jenny, I've been an idiot, and spoilt the evening. Do forgive me,
Jenny," he cried, burying his face in her shoulder. "My vile temper
wouldn't have lasted a moment if I could just have been kissed once; but
Castleton got on my nerves and the waiter would hover about all the time
and everybody enraged me. Forgive me, sweet thing, will you?"

Jenny abandoning at once every tradition of obstinacy, caught him to
her.

"You silly old thing."

"I know I am, and you're a little darling."

"And he wasn't ever going to see me again. What a liberty! Not ever."

"I am an insufferable ass."

"And he wished he'd never met me. Oh, Maurice, you do say unkind
things."

"Were you nearly crying once?" he asked. "When I gave you the brooch?"

"Perhaps."

"Jenny, precious one, are you nearly crying now?" he whispered.

"No, of course not."

Yet when he kissed her eyelids they were wet.

"Shall I pin the brooch now?"

She nodded.

"Jenny, you don't know how I hate myself for being unkind to you. I hate
myself. I shall fret about this all night."

"Not still a miserable old thing?" she asked, fingering the smooth face
of the opal that had caused such a waste of emotion.

"Happy now. So happy." He sighed on her breast.

"So am I."

"You're more to me every moment."

"Am I?"

"You're so sweet and patient. Such a pearl, such a treasure."

"You think so."

"My little Queen of Hearts, you've a genius for love."

"What's that?"

"I mean, you're just right. You never make a mistake. You're patient
with my wretched artistic temperament. Like a perfect work of art,
you're a perfect work of love."

"Maurice, you _are_ a darling," she sighed on the authentic note of
passionate youth in love.

"When you whisper like that, it takes my breath away.... Jenny are you
ever going to be more to me even than you are now?"

"What do you mean, more?" she asked.

"Well, everything that a woman can be to a man. You see I'm an artist,
and an artist longs for the completion of a great work. My love f