I came, and we've
wasted such a lot of time not understanding each other. Even now, I
can't be sure you love me--not _sure!_ I think you do; but you only say
so. How's anyone ever to be sure, unless they know it in their bones?
And I've been thinking about you every minute since we met. Because I
never met anybody like you, or loved anybody before..."

She broke off, her voice trembling, her face against his, breathless and
exhausted.

iv

"Now listen, Jenny," said Keith. "This is this. I love you, and you love
me. That's right, isn't it? Well. I don't care about marriage--I mean, a
ceremony; but you do. So we'll be married when I come back in three
months. That's all right, isn't it? And when we're married, we'll either
take your father with us, whatever his health's like; or we'll do
something with him that'll do as well. I should be ready to put him in
somebody's care; but you wouldn't like that..."

"I love him," Jenny said. "I couldn't leave him to somebody else for
ever."

"Yes. Well, you see there's nothing to be miserable about. It's all
straightforward now. Nothing--except that we're going to be apart for
three months. Now, Jen: don't let's waste any more time being miserable;
but let's sit down and be happy for a bit...How's that?"

Jenny smiled, and allowed him to bring her once again to the settee and
to begin once more to describe their future life.

"It's cold there, Jenny. Not warm at all. Snow and ice. And you won't
see anybody for weeks and months--anybody but just me. And we shall have
to do everything for ourselves--clothes, house-building, food catching
and killing... Trim your own hats... Like the Swiss Family Robinson;
only you won't have everything growing outside as they did. And we'll go
out in canoes if we go on the water at all; and see Indians--'Heap big
man bacca' sort of business--and perhaps hear wolves (I'm not quite sure
of that); and go about on sledges... with dogs to draw them. But with
all that we shall be free. There won't be any bureaucrats to tyrannise
over us; no fashions, no regulations, no homemade laws to make dull boys
of us. Just fancy, Jenny: nobody to _make_ us do anything. Nothing but
our own needs and wishes..."

"I expect we shall tyrannise--as you call it--over each other," Jenny
said shrewdly. "It seems to me that's what people do."

"Little wretch!" cried Keith. "To interrupt with such a thing. When I
was just getting busy and eloquent. I tell you: ther