r out of
one's fingers, to make one's brainstuff hot and thick and dark. It makes
one's work seem not worth doing. But that's all over. It won't come
again now I have you!" He sat down on the basket chair and drew her on
to his knee, giving her light caresses to correct the heavy things he
had just been saying. She received them abstractedly, as if she were
thinking silent vows. "Ellen, I don't know what your eyes are like. The
sea never looks kind like that, and they are wittier than flowers.
You're not really like a flower at all, you know, though I believe that
in our circumstances it's considered the proper thing for me to tell you
that you are. You're too important, and you wouldn't like growing in a
garden, which even wild flowers seem to want to do. I'll tell you what
you're like. You're like an olive tree. They're slim like you, and their
branches go up like arms, as if they were asking for a vote, and they
grow dangerously (just as you would if you were a tree) on the very
edge of cliffs; and one looks past them at the blue sea, just as I look
past you at the glorious life I'm going to have now I've got you.
Dearest, when can we get married?"

"Oh!" exclaimed Ellen, greatly pleased. "Are you in a position to keep a
wife?"

He burst out laughing. "You darling! Do you know, I believe I could keep
two."

She did not laugh. "It's wicked to think that if you did I couldn't
divorce you. You'd have to be cruel as well. I heard Brynhild Ormiston
say so."

He went on laughing. "Well, don't let that hold you back. I dare say I
could, rise to being cruel as well. Let's look on the bright side of
things. Tell me, darling, when will you marry me?"

"Those iniquitous marriage-laws," she murmured. "It makes one think...."
She looked down, weighing grave things.

"My dearest, you can forget the marriage-laws. I will adore you so, I
will be so faithful, I will work my fingers to the bone so gladly to
make you kind to me, that there is no divorce law in the world will let
you get rid of me." Shy at his own sincerity, he kissed her hair, and
whispered in her ear, "I mean it, Ellen."

She raised her head with that bravery he loved so much, and gave him her
lips to kiss, but her eyes were still wide and set with reluctance.

"What can be worrying her?" he wondered. "Can it be that she isn't sure
about my money? Of course she hasn't the least idea how much I've got.
Wise little thing, if she dreads transplantation to some