have come to talk to me. I was watching you walking up and
down under the trees, and you looked so lonely I half made up my mind
to join you."

A lovely color was deepening in her cheeks, and her eyes drooped
shyly. He broke right into the subject at once while he had the
courage to do it.

"I have something to say to you, Pluma," he began, leading her to an
adjacent sofa and seating himself beside her. "I want to ask you if
you will be my wife." He looked perhaps the more confused of the two.
"I will do my best to make you happy," he continued. "I can not say
that I will make a model husband, but I will say I will do my best."

There was a minute's silence, awkward enough for both.

"You have asked me to be your wife, Rex, but you have not said one
word of loving me."

The remark was so unexpected Rex seemed for a few moments to be
unable to reply to it. Looking at the eager, expectant face turned
toward him, it appeared ungenerous and unkind not to give her one
affectionate word. Yet he did not know how to say it; he had never
spoken a loving word to any one except Daisy, his fair little
child-bride.

He tried hard to put the memory of Daisy away from him as he
answered:

"The question is so important that most probably I have thought more
of it than of any words which should go with it."

"Oh, that is it," returned Pluma, with a wistful little laugh. "Most
men, when they ask women to marry them, say something of love, do they
not?"

"Yes," he replied, absently.

"You have had no experience," laughed Pluma, archly.

She was sorely disappointed. She had gone over in her own imagination
this very scene a thousand times, of the supreme moment he would clasp
his arms around her, telling her in glowing, passionate words how
dearly he loved her and how wretched his life would be without her. He
did nothing of the kind.

Rex was thinking he would have given anything to have been able to
make love to her--anything for the power of saying tender words--she
looked so loving.

Her dark, beautiful face was so near him, and her graceful figure so
close, that he could have wound his arm around her, but he did not. In
spite of every resolve, he thought of Daisy the whole time. How
different that other love-making had been! How his heart throbbed, and
every endearing name he could think of trembled on his lips, as he
strained Daisy to his heart when she had bashfully consented to be his
wife!

That love-making w