were in the
pockets of his great-coat, and his eyes were fixed on the ground. Sombre
he was, distinctly sombre, in mien and gait; could she make him smile
and flush and glow, as she was smiling and flushing and glowing? As he
heard her voice he raised his head quickly and uncomprehendingly.

"Don't come any nearer," she said, "until I have told you something!"
His mind had been so full of her that the sight of her in the flesh,
standing twenty feet away, bewildered him.

She took a few steps nearer the gate, near enough now for him to see her
rosy face framed in a blue hood, and to catch the brightness of her
eyes under their lovely lashes. Ordinarily they were cool and limpid and
grave, Waitstill's eyes; now a sunbeam danced in each of them. And her
lips, almost always tightly closed, as if she were holding back her
natural speech,--her lips were red and parted, and the soul of her, free
at last, shone through her face, making it luminous with a new beauty.

"I have left home for good and all," she said. "I'll tell you more of
this later on, but I have left my father's house with nothing to my name
but the clothes I stand in. I am going to look for work in the mills
to-morrow, but I stopped here to say that I'm ready to marry you
whenever you want me--if you do want me."

Ivory was bewildered, indeed, but not so much so that he failed to
apprehend, and instantly, too, the real significance of this speech.

He took a couple of long strides, and before Waitstill had any idea of
his intentions he vaulted over the bars and gathered her in his arms.

"Never shall you go to the mills, never shall you leave my sight for
a single hour again, my one-woman-in-all-the-world! Come to me, to be
loved and treasured all your life long! I've worshipped you ever since I
was a boy; I've kept my heart swept and garnished for you and no other,
hoping I might win you at last."

How glorious to hear all this delicious poetry of love, and to feel
Ivory's arms about her, making the dream seem surer!

"Oh, how like you to shorten the time of my waiting!" he went on, his
words fairly chasing one another in their eagerness to be spoken. "How
like you to count on me, to guess my hunger for your love, to realize
the chains that held me back, and break them yourself with your own
dear, womanly hands! How like you, oh, wonderful Waitstill!"

Ivory went on murmuring phrases that had been lying in his heart unsaid
for years, scarcely conscio