hat are you asking me to do?"

"I am asking you to be my wife. What is the ceremony to you? What are
a few words mumbled by a hired priest? Love, love alone, is marriage."

"No, no. To you perhaps. But not to me."

"And the ceremony shall follow as soon as we can manage. Can you not
trust me for that?"

"But----"

"Will you not trust me? If you are to put your whole life into my
keeping you should at least begin by doing that."

The girl looked at the man and then away, at vistas he could not see,
the winding slopes of asphodel, the sudden and precipitate abyss. Yet
he spoke so fair, she told herself. Surely it was to the slopes he
meant to take her, not to that blackening pit.

"Yet if you won't," Loftus continued, "it is best for both that we
should part."

"For--for always?"

"Yes."

Just why he omitted to explain. But then there are explanations that
explain nothing. Yet to her, for a moment, the threat was like a flash
in darkness. For a moment she thought that she could not let him go.
About her swarmed her dreams. Through them his kisses pierced. For a
moment only. The flash had passed. She was in darkness again. Before
her was the precipitate abyss. Shudderingly she drew from it.

But Loftus was very resolute. "If you will you have my promise."

For answer she looked at him, looked into his eyes, peered into them,
deep down, striving to see what was there, trying to mirror her soul
in his own.

"Before God and man I swear you shall be my wife."

At that, suddenly within her, fear melted away. If she had not seen
his soul she had heard it. Where fear had been was faith. Dumb with
the enchantment of a dream come true, she half arose. But his arms
went about her and in them she lay like seaweed in the tide.

CHAPTER V

MARIE CHANGES HER NAME

Gay Street knew Marie no more. Twenty-second street made her
acquaintance. There, in the Arundel, an apartment house which is just
around the corner from Gramercy Park, Loftus secured quarters for her.

These quarters, convenient for him, to her were temporary. She
regarded them as a tent on the road to the slopes. Even in that light
they were attractive. Though small, they were fastidiously furnished
and formed what agents call a "bijou." Loftus, who had whims which the
girl thought poetic, preferred "aviary." He preferred, too, that she
should change her name. Durand seemed to him extremely plebeian.
Mentally he cast about. Leroy suggested its