ash. Do you want me to? If the whole thing went
to the devil it would be a small price to pay for getting even another
half-chance to make good with you. May I, Marjorie? Say I may!"

He was bending forward, alert and passionate, as if it were a chance to
own the world that he was begging for. She told him so.

"It is--my world. I mean it, Marjorie. I don't deserve it, and I
don't see how you can trust me, but let me do that. Or anything. I
don't care how hard or how ridiculous, if it would mean that some day I
could come back to you and you'd consider--just consider--being my
wife."

"But, Francis! But, Francis, I don't want you to be ridiculous! I
don't want you to fall down on your work. I don't want you to do
anything----"

"I know you don't. That's the worst of it. And it's coming to me."

She was silent for a little while.

"It hadn't occurred to you, then, that perhaps--perhaps living in the
house with you might have made me--well, a little fonder of you?"

She did not know what she had expected him to do when she said that.
Anything but what he did do--sit perfectly still and unbelieving, and
look as if she had stabbed him.

"No," he said finally. "That couldn't happen. Don't talk to me that
way, Marjorie. It's cruel. Not that you haven't the right to be
cruel."

It was Marjorie's time of triumph, that she had planned for so long, in
those days when the work was hard and things were lonely sometimes.
But she did not take it. She only put out one shy hand, for it was a
little hard for her to go on talking, she was getting so tired, and
said timidly:

"But it is true, Francis. I--I am fond of you. And if there's
anything to forgive, I have. You know you can't be so dreadfully angry
with people when--when you like them. You--why, you don't have to wait
and have tests. I'll stay with you now, if you want me."

He stared at her a little longer, still incredulous. Then with an
inarticulate cry he was down on his knees beside her long chair, and he
had her in his arms, just as he had held her the night before he went
away, just after they were married. No, not just the same; for though
he held her as closely and as tenderly, there was something of fear
still in the way he kept his arms about her; as if he did not really
think it was true. He knelt there for a long time, and neither of them
moved. He did not call her affectionate names; he only kept repeating,
"Marjorie! Marjor