"Got what?"

"Five hundred pounds a year."

"Five hundred pounds!"

I burst into laughter that had more than a taste of bitterness.

"Yes," I said, "really! and NOW what do you think?"

"Yes," she said, a little flushed; "but be sensible! Do you really mean
you've got a Rise, all at once, of two hundred a year?"

"To marry on--yes."

She scrutinised me a moment. "You've done this as a surprise!" she said,
and laughed at my laughter. She had become radiant, and that made me
radiant, too.

"Yes," I said, "yes," and laughed no longer bitterly.

She clasped her hands and looked me in the eyes.

She was so pleased that I forgot absolutely my disgust of a moment
before. I forgot that she had raised her price two hundred pounds a year
and that I had bought her at that.

"Come!" I said, standing up; "let's go towards the sunset, dear, and
talk about it all. Do you know--this is a most beautiful world, an
amazingly beautiful world, and when the sunset falls upon you it
makes you into shining gold. No, not gold--into golden glass.... Into
something better that either glass or gold."...

And for all that evening I wooed her and kept her glad. She made me
repeat my assurances over again and still doubted a little.

We furnished that double-fronted house from attic--it ran to an
attic--to cellar, and created a garden.

"Do you know Pampas Grass?" said Marion. "I love Pampas Grass... if
there is room."

"You shall have Pampas Grass," I declared. And there were moments as we
went in imagination about that house together, when my whole being cried
out to take her in my arms--now. But I refrained. On that aspect of life
I touched very lightly in that talk, very lightly because I had had
my lessons. She promised to marry me within two months' time. Shyly,
reluctantly, she named a day, and next afternoon, in heat and wrath,
we "broke it off" again for the last time. We split upon procedure.
I refused flatly to have a normal wedding with wedding cake, in white
favours, carriages and the rest of it. It dawned upon me suddenly in
conversation with her and her mother, that this was implied. I blurted
out my objection forthwith, and this time it wasn't any ordinary
difference of opinion; it was a "row." I don't remember a quarter of the
things we flung out in that dispute. I remember her mother reiterating
in tones of gentle remonstrance: "But, George dear, you must have
a cake--to send home." I think we all reiterated thi