ished, which swallowed her like a cavern, and as
Jefferson Edwardes knelt on the rug beside her, and watched the flames
caress into gorgeous vividness the color of her eyes and lips and cheeks
and hair, it pleased him to think of her as seated on a throne, and of
himself as at her feet.

They had no light but the firelight and needed none, for they had
captured the brightness and joyousness and warmth of June and meant to
carry it with them wheresoever they went and through all the meaner
months.

Mary's right hand was still gloved, but the left was bare and she kept
turning it this way and that, watching with engrossed fascination a
diamond on one finger that caught and splintered the firelight. It was
the jewel which proclaimed that Mary Burton was to be Mary Edwardes.

When her companion spoke, his voice was softened by a very tender
triumph.

"Who am I," he asked wonderingly and humbly, "that life should be so
lavish and generous with me? Mary, Mary, I told you once that you were
as beautiful as starlight on water, but you are more than that. That is
only a beauty to the eye, and you are a miracle to the heart and soul as
well."

"Once," she said while her voice trembled happily, "I was satisfied with
what beauty I had." She bent forward with a sudden gesture of possession
and tenderness, as she caught his head between her two hands. "That was
when it was my own. Now that it's yours I wish it were a hundred times
greater."

"And you are the girl," he smiled, "who once pretended to think she had
no soul, and very little heart."

"If I have either, dearest," she declared, "I owe it to you. You found a
poor little spark of soul and fanned it into life--but a heart I have,
and it's ablaze and it's yours to keep!" Her voice thrilled as she
added: "If I had the world to give, it should all be yours, too--all of
it."

"I feel," he assured her, "as though you have given me the universe."

For a while they sat silent; then the girl's eyes danced into sudden
mischief as she reminded him, "We have still an ordeal ahead, you know.
We have to tell Hamilton."

"A love that feared ordeals," he laughed easily, "would hardly be worth
offering you. Does he still dislike me?"

The girl nodded. "He isn't exactly as mad about you as I am," she
confessed. "But," her head came up and the regnant pride that seemed
inherent there shone from her eyes, "my life is mine to use as I wish,
and I have no use for it, dear heart, sav