mly. "Not nearly as much as the Revenge
was worth. I kept gangs of men scrubbing that boat till I nearly went
into bankruptcy. And, what's more, you ought to keep your word, you
know. You said you were going to marry Richard Leigh--Richard Grenville
Cary Leigh is his whole name, you know. Will you keep your word?"

"But I--but you--but I didn't know," stammered Sally, feebly.

He went on eagerly. "You told me how he should wear his name--high
and--and all that." He had no time for abstractions. "He can never do it
alone--will you come and help him?"

Sally was palpably starching about for weapons to aid her losing fight.
"Why do you like me? I'm not beautiful like Anne Ford." He laughed. "I'm
not rich, you know, like lots of American girls. We're very poor"--she
looked at him earnestly.

[Illustration: I felt myself pulled by two pairs of hands.]

"I don't care if you're rich or poor," he said. "I don't know if
you're beautiful--I only know you're you. It's all I want."

She shook a little at his vehemence, but she was a long fighter. "You
don't know me very much," she went on, her soft voice breaking. "Maybe
it's only a fancy--the moonlight and the sailing and all--maybe you only
imagine you like me."

"Imagine I like you!"

And then, at the sight of his quick movement and of Sally's face I
managed to get behind a curtain and put my fingers in my ears. No woman
has a right to more than one woman's love-making. And as I stood there,
a few minutes later, I felt myself pulled by two pairs of hands, and
Sally and her lover were laughing at me.

"May I have her? I want her very much," he said, and I wondered if ever
any one could say no to anything he asked. So, with a word about Sally's
far-away mother and father, I told him, as an old woman might, that I
had loved him from the first, and then I said a little of what Sally was
to me.

"I like her very much," I said, in a shaky voice that tried to be
casual. "Are you sure that you like her enough?" For all of his answer,
he turned, not even touching her hands, and looked at her.

It was as if I caught again the fragrance of the box hedges in the
southern sunshine of a garden where I had walked on a spring morning
long ago. Love is as old-fashioned as the ocean, and us little changed
in all the centuries. Its always yielding, never retreating arms lie
about the lands that are built and carved and covered with men's
progress; it keeps the air sweet and fresh abov