ind they are!" he said, with a boyish attempt at a sneer.

She laughed forgivingly, seeing the hurt beneath the unworthy effort,
and laid her fingers over his.

"That's the kind I am, too! This is my home, and this is my life, and
God is good to me to make it so pleasant and so easy!"

"Do you dare say, Martie, that if it were not for Adele you would not
marry me?"

Martie considered seriously.

"No, I can't say that, John. But you might as well ask me what I would
do if Cliff's wife were alive and yours dead!"

"I see," he said hopelessly.

For a few minutes there was silence in the old garden. John stared at
the neglected path, where shade lay so heavily that even in summer
emerald green moss filmed the jutting bricks. Martie anxiously watched
him.

"What do you want me to do?" he asked, presently, in a dead voice.

"I ask you not to make my life hard again, just when I have made it
smooth," she said eagerly. "I've been fighting all my life, John--now
I've won! I'm not only doing something that pleases them, I'm doing the
one thing that could please them most! And that means joy for me,
too--it's ALL right, for every one, at last! Dear, if I could marry
you, then that would be something else to think about, but I can't. It
would never be a marriage at all, in my eyes--"

"Oh, how I hate this petty talk of marriage, and duty, and all the rest
of it!" he burst out bitterly. "Tied to a little village, and its
ideals--YOU! Oh, Martie, why aren't you bigger than all this, why don't
you snap your fingers at them all? Come away with me--come away with
me, Sweetheart, let's get out of it--and away from them! You and I,
Martie, what do we need of the world? Oh, I want you so--I want you so!
We'll go to Connecticut, and live on the bank of our river, and we'll
make boats for Teddy--"

Teddy! If she had been wavering, even here in the old garden, which was
still haunted for her with memories of little girl days, of Saturday
mornings with dolls, houses and sugar pies, the child's name brought
her suddenly to earth. Teddy--! That was her answer.

She got to her feet, and began to walk steadily toward the house. He
followed her.

"I ask you--for my sake--to give up the thought of it," she said
firmly. "I BEG you--! I want you to go away--to India, John, and forget
me--forget it all!"

He walked beside her for a moment in silence. When he spoke his voice
was dead and level.

"Of course if you ask me, the thing is