t seemed to her impossible that he could be sitting beside her talking
about marriage seriously, and more than impossible that she could be
sitting there listening.

"People know you as Grace Goodchild. After the marriage they will know
you as the Grace Goodchild that H. R. has married. What would become of
you if you cease to be Grace Goodchild?"

She thought of Philadelphia, and shuddered. But he thought he had not
convinced her. He rose and said to her:

"Oh, my love! You are so utterly and completely beautiful that if I have
a man's work to do I shall succeed only because the reward is you! I
have come to the turning-point in my career and I must have the light of
your eyes to guide me."

She did not love him and therefore she heard his words very distinctly.
But she was a woman, and she was thrilled by his look and his voice and
by his manner. He was no longer a mountebank to her, but an unusual man.
And when she thought of not marrying him her mind reverted in some
curious way to Philadelphia and its subtle suggestions of sarcophagi and
the contents thereof. But this man must not think that he could win her
by stage speeches even though they might be real. She said to him,
determinedly:

"We might as well understand each other--"

"I am the creature; you are the creator," he quickly interjected. "You
are very beautiful, _very_! but you have much more than beauty. You
have brains, and I think your heart is a marvelous lute--"

"A what?" she asked, curiously. No woman will allow the catalogue to be
skimped or obscured.

"A lute, a wonderful musical instrument that some day will be played by
a master hand. When you cease to be merely a girl and become a woman,
with your capacity for loving when you let yourself go! Ah!" He closed
his eyes and trembled.

All women, at heart, love to be accused of being psychic pyromaniacs.

"_There will I give thee my loves!_" he muttered, quoting from the "Song
of Songs."

She knew it wasn't original because he said it so solemnly. She dared
not ask from whom the quotation was. It sounded like Swinburne.

"Come!" He was not quoting this time. He stood before her, his face
tense, his eyes aflame, his arms stretched imploringly toward her.

She met his gaze--and then she could not look away. She saw the
wonderful man of whom the papers had printed miles of columns, who had
made all New York talk of him for weeks, who was young and strong and
comely and masterful, who ha