the moment--not a petal of the flower of
love should be lost to her. She should find them all dewy and unwithered
in her bridal crown. There should not be a kiss, a hot protestation, the
tawdry path of love half tasted yet long deferred. Lydia should, for the
present, stay a child. His one dear thought, the thought that made him
feel unimaginably free, came winging to him like a bird with messages.

"We aren't," he said, "going to be prisoners, either of us."

"No," said Lydia soberly. She knew by her talk with him and reading what
he had imperfectly written, that he meant to be eternally free through
fulfilling the incomprehensible paradox of binding himself to the law.

"We aren't going to be downed by loving each other so we can't stand up
to it and say we'll wait."

"I can stand up to it," said Lydia. "I can stand up to anything--for
you."

"I don't know," he said, "just how we're coming out. I mean, I don't
know whether I'm coming out something you'll like or not like. How can a
man be sure what's in him? Shall I wake up some time and know, because
I've been a thief, I ought never to think of anything now but
money--paying back, cent for cent, or cents for dollars, what I lost? I
don't know. Or shall I think I'm right in not doing anything spectacular
and plodding along here and working for the town? I don't know that. One
thing I know--you. If I said I loved you it wouldn't be a millionth part
of what I do. I'm founded on you. I'm rooted in you. There! that's
enough. Stop me. That's the thing I wasn't going to do."

They were at their own gate. They halted there.

"You'd better go down and find Anne and Farvie," said Lydia.

She stood in the light from the lamp and he looked full at her. This was
a Lydia he meant never to call out from her maiden veiling after
to-night until the day when he could summon her for open vows and
unstinted cherishing. He wanted to learn her face by heart. How was her
brave soul answering him? The child face, sweet in every tint and line
of it, turned to him in an unhesitating response. It was the garden of
love, and, too, a pure unhindered happiness.

"I'm going in," said Lydia, "to get something ready for them to
eat--Farvie and Anne. For us, too."

She took a little run away from him, and he watched her light figure
until the shrubbery hid her. At the door, it must have been, she gave a
clear call. Jeff answered the call, and then went on to find his father
and Anne. He kn