wanted--till now
you."

"And you _are_ my heart," he answered fervently--"the heart of my
heart, my very life!"

"Am I?" she smiled. "And you are mine."

"But, sweetheart, tell me if, when you know me better, you do not
find me all you think me now, what then? Will you hate me for very
disappointment?"

He asked the question, but as if he believed in himself and the
impossibility of her hatred or disappointment while he asked it.

She looked at him with naive incredulity and surprise. It would have
been a challenge to be kissed from any other woman, but Leam, with her
fire and passion and personal reticence all in one, had no thought
of offering such a challenge, still less of submitting to its
consequences.

"Find you all I think?" she repeated slowly. "When I know the saints
in heaven, will not they be all I think? Was not Columbus?"

"But I am neither a saint nor a hero," said Edgar, drawing a sprig of
lemon-plant which he held in his hand lightly across her face.

"You are both," answered Leam as positively as she used to answer
Alick about the ugliness of England and the want of flowers in the
woods and hedges, and with as much conviction of her case.

"And you are an angel," he returned.

"No," said Leam quietly, "I am only the woman who loves you."

"Ah, but you must not depreciate yourself for my sake," he said. "My
choice, my love, my wife, must be perfect for my own honor. You must
respect me in respecting yourself, and if you were to say yes indeed
you were an angel, that would only be what is due to me. Don't you
see?" pleasantly.

"Yes," she answered. "And only an angel would be good enough for you."

"My sweetest, your flattery is too delicious. It will make me vain and
all sorts of bad things," said Edgar with a happy smile, finding this
innocent worship one of the most charming tributes ever brought to the
shrine of his lordly manhood by woman.

"It is not flattery: you deserve more," said Leam. Then lapsing into
her old manner of checked utterance, she added, "I cannot talk, but
you should be told."

Edgar thought he had been told pretty often by women the virtues which
they had seen in him. Whether they saw what was or what they imagined
was not to the point. If love creates, so does vanity, and of the two
the latter has the more permanence.

After this there was a long pause. It was as if one chapter had been
finished, one cup emptied. Then said Edgar suddenly, "And you will
be