o people who love each other can be happy anywhere. Environment
is half the battle--for the super-civilized, at all events. But you
shall never have another dose of the writer. I'll write my plays in New
York and rush production. The greater part of the year I shall spend
with you in Europe, and I cannot think of anything I'd like more--why,
the very night I first saw you I was longing with all my soul to get out
of New York and over to the other side of the world---- Why, Mary! You
are not crying? You! I never believed you could----"

"I--I--did not believe it either. . . . But, are you sure? Could you
reconcile yourself? You seem so much a part of New York, of this strange
high-pitched civilization. If you are not sure--if you are only tired of
New York for the moment. . . . I--yes, I will! I'll give it all up and
live here. Of course I love New York itself--was it not my Mary Ogden
home? And there are delightful people everywhere. . . . No doubt my
dream of doing great things in Europe was mere vanity----"

"Do you believe that?"

"Perhaps not. But, after all, what I tried to do might be so easily
frustrated in that cauldron--why should I risk personal happiness--the
most precious and the rarest thing in life, for what may be a
chimera--wasted years and a wasted life. Why are we made as we are, if
to coax that hidden spark into a steady flame is not our highest destiny?
It certainly is our manifest right. . . . Dreams of doing great things
in this world are nine-tenths personal vanity. I believe that when we
leave this planet we go to a higher star, where our incompleteness here
will be made complete; and perhaps we are spared a term of probation if
we make ourselves as complete here as mortal conditions will permit.
And, possibly, once in a great while, two human beings are permitted to
effect that completeness together."

They were both in an exalted mood. The wood was very still, its beauty
incomparable. And they might already have been on another star.

Across that divine balsam-scented stillness came the deep imperative
notes of a bell.

Clavering twitched his shoulders impatiently.

"Let them go on their screaming picnic," he said. "We stay here. Did
you mean that, Mary?"

"Yes, I meant it. We will not go to Europe at all--except to visit my
Dolomites some day. When you are writing I'll come up here."

"I don't know that I shall ask that sacrifice of you. A part of your
bra