Then, I don't know what."

"Shall I say it for you?"

She hesitated a long minute, then:

"You mightn't say it right," she replied.

"Trust me for that. Shall I say it for you, Hilma?"

"I don't know what you'll say."

"I'll say what you are thinking of. Shall I say it?"

There was a very long pause. A goldfish rose to the surface of the
little pond, with a sharp, rippling sound. The fog drifted overhead.
There was nobody about.

"No," said Hilma, at length. "I--I--I can say it for myself. I--" All
at once she turned to him and put her arms around his neck. "Oh, DO you
love me?" she cried. "Is it really true? Do you mean every word of it?
And you are sorry and you WILL be good to me if I will be your wife? You
will be my dear, dear husband?"

The tears sprang to Annixter's eyes. He took her in his arms and held
her there for a moment. Never in his life had he felt so unworthy, so
undeserving of this clean, pure girl who forgave him and trusted his
spoken word and believed him to be the good man he could only wish to
be. She was so far above him, so exalted, so noble that he should have
bowed his forehead to her feet, and instead, she took him in her arms,
believing him to be good, to be her equal. He could think of no words
to say. The tears overflowed his eyes and ran down upon his cheeks. She
drew away from him and held him a second at arm's length, looking at
him, and he saw that she, too, had been crying.

"I think," he said, "we are a couple of softies."

"No, no," she insisted. "I want to cry and want you to cry, too. Oh,
dear, I haven't a handkerchief."

"Here, take mine."

They wiped each other's eyes like two children and for a long time sat
in the deserted little Japanese pleasure house, their arms about each
other, talking, talking, talking.

On the following Saturday they were married in an uptown Presbyterian
church, and spent the week of their honeymoon at a small, family hotel
on Sutter Street. As a matter of course, they saw the sights of the city
together. They made the inevitable bridal trip to the Cliff House and
spent an afternoon in the grewsome and made-to-order beauties of
Sutro's Gardens; they went through Chinatown, the Palace Hotel, the
park museum--where Hilma resolutely refused to believe in the Egyptian
mummy--and they drove out in a hired hack to the Presidio and the Golden
Gate.

On the sixth day of their excursions, Hilma abruptly declared they had
had enough of "playi