re for and who'll
care for you and take care of you. Failing that, it would be fair enough
for you to take me, failing a better. See?"

"You mean," she said, "that if things don't straighten out, it would be
better for me to become Mrs. Bower than walk the streets? Is that it?"

I nodded.

"But I don't see your point of view," she cried. "Just because you're
sorry for a girl don't mean you want to make her your wife."

"It isn't sorrowing," I said. "It's wanting. It's the right kind of
wanting. It's the wanting that would rather wait than hurt you; that
would rather do without you than hurt you."

"And you'll trust me with all your savings and go away to Australia--and
if I find some other man that I like better you'll let me off from
marrying you? Is that it?"

"That's about it," I said.

"And suppose," says she, "that you don't come back, and nobody shows up,
and the money goes?"

That was a new point of view.

"Well," said I, "we've got to take some chances in this world."

"We have," said she. "And now look here--I don't know how much of it's
wanting and how much of it's fear--but if you'll take chances I will."

She turned as red as a beet and looked away.

"In words of two syllables," said I, "what do you mean?"

"I mean," she said--and she was still as red as a beet, but this time
she looked me in my eyes without a flinch in hers--"that if you're dead
sure you want me--are you?--if you're dead sure, why, I'll take chances
on my wanting you. I believe every word you've said to me. Is that
right?"

"Every word," I said. "That is right."

Then we looked at each other for a long time.

"What a lot we'll have to tell each other," she said, "before we're
really acquainted. But you're sure? You're quite sure?"

"Sure that I want you? Yes," I said; "not sure that you ought not to
wait and think me over."

"You've begun," she said, "with everything that's noble and generous. I
could never look myself in the face again if I felt called upon to begin
by being mean."

"Hadn't you better think it over?" I said. "Hadn't you?"

But she put her hands on my shoulders.

"If an angel with wings had come with gifts," she said, "would I have
thought them over? And just because your wings don't show----"

"It isn't fair," I mumbled. "I give you a choice between the streets and
me and you feel forced to choose me."

But she pulled my head down and gave me a quick, fierce kiss.

"There," said she--"was tha