oss with me, I've not known what
to do. Guy, you won't ever ask me to come out again at night?"

"Not if it worries you afterwards."

"Oh yes, it has, it has! Guy, when shall we be married?"

"This year. It shall be this year," he vowed. "Let us believe that,
Pauline. You do believe that?"

"Oh, Guy, I adore you so wildly. It must be this year. My darling, my
darling, this year ... let it be this year."

Guy doled out very carefully the L35 he had accumulated by the sale of
his books. Lampard and Clary had to be content with L7 apiece. Five more
creditors received L4, or rather one of them only L3 19_s_., so that the
guinea left over could be put back into the current account for poetic
justice. There was, for the present nothing more to do but await the
verdict of Worrall's reader, and in a fortnight Guy heard from the
publisher to say this had been favorable enough to make Mr. Worrall wish
to see him in order to discuss the matter of publication. Guy was much
excited and rushed across to the Rectory in a festivity of hopefulness.
He had wired to say he would be in London next day, and all that evening
the name of Worrall was lauded until round his unknown personality shone
the aureole of a wise and benevolent saint. There seemed no limit to
what so discerning a publisher might not do for Guy, and he and Pauline
became to themselves and to her family the hero and heroine of such an
adventure as never had been. In the course of the evening Guy had an
opportunity of talking to Margaret, and for the first time for a long
while he availed himself of it.

"Are you really going to talk to me, then?" she asked in mock surprise.

"Margaret, I've been rather objectionable lately," said Guy, remembering
with an access of penitence that it must be almost exactly a year ago
that he and Margaret in that snowy weather had first talked about his
love for Pauline.

"Well, I have thought that you were forgetting me," said Margaret. "I
shall be sad if we are never going to be friends again."

"Oh, Margaret, we are friends now. I've been worried, and I thought that
you had been rather unkind to Pauline."

"I haven't really."

"Of course not. It was absolutely my fault," Guy admitted. "Now that
there seems a chance of our being married in less than ten years, I'm
going to give up this continual exasperation in which I live nowadays.
It's curious that my first impression of you all should have been as of
a Mozart symphony, so