her this engagement
would be a--a happy thing for you, Jim. I've wondered--"

"But, sweetheart!" he interrupted eagerly, "I love you! You're the only
woman I ever wanted to marry! I love you just because you _are_ different,
you are so much wiser and deeper and truer than any other girl I ever
knew, and if your people and your life have made you that, why I love
them, too! And you do love me, Julie?"

Julia raised heavy eyes, and he could see that tears were pressing close
behind them. She did not speak, but her look suddenly enveloped him like
a cloud. Jim felt a sudden prick of tears behind his own eyes.

"Sweetness," he said gravely, "I know you love me! And Julia, my whole
soul is simply on fire for you. Don't--_don't_ let any mere trifle come
between us now. Let me tell my mother and father to-morrow!"

A clear light was shining in Julia's eyes. Now, as she automatically
arranged the tea things before her, and poured him his first cup of tea,
she said:

"Jim, I told you that I haven't thought much about marriage for myself.
I suppose it's funny that I shouldn't, for they say most girls do! But
perhaps it was because the biographies and histories I began to read
when I came to the settlement house were all about men: how Lincoln
rose, how Napoleon rose, how this rich man sold newspapers when he was a
little boy, and that other one spent his first money in taking his
mother out of the poorhouse. And of course marriage doesn't enter so
much into the lives of men. It came to me years ago that what wise men
are trying to din into young people everywhere is just this: that if you
make yourself ready for anything, that thing will come to you. Just do
your end, and somewhere out in the queer, big, incomprehensible
machinery of the world your place will mysteriously begin to get ready
for you--Am I talking sense, Jim?"

"Absolutely. Go on!" said Jim.

"Well, and so I thought that if I took years and years I might--well,
you won't see why, but I wanted to be a lady!" confessed Julia, her lips
smiling, but with serious eyes. "And, Jim, everything comes so much more
easily than one thinks. Your aunt knew I wasn't, but I happened to be
what she needed, and I kept quiet, and listened and learned!"

"And suppose you _hadn't_ happened upon the settlement house?" asked Jim,
his ardent eyes never moving from her face.

"Why, I would have done it somehow, some other way. I meant to take a
position in some family, and perhap