s heart and brain told him that here
at last was hope realized, the goal reached, the attainment of
certainty. The knowledge that he could not bear to lose her told him
that he loved, and that his love was worthy of a declaration. He
breathed a prayer of thankfulness.

Doubt of a prosaic nature was swift to follow. He loved her and must ask
her to marry him. Yet, how could he ask her? He had not a penny in the
world save what she had given him as her paid employee. How could he ask
her to wed and coolly propose to live on her income? Lionel made short
work of that. "I know," he said to himself, thinking swiftly but with
honest logic, "that I am not mercenary. I would marry her in rags if
she'd have me. As she happens to have money, so much the better. If by
good luck she loves or learns to love me, she will not think me
mercenary. Why should a pair of lovers wait when the only obstacle is a
convention?--a convention good enough in itself (a proper discouragement
of the ordinary place-hunter and hypocrite)--but a convention none the
less. The exception shall prove the rule, for neither she nor I could be
accused of conventionality."

He laughed aloud. Still, there was a kind of discomfort in the laugh,
for the conventions of a thousand years or more can not be laughed away
in a moment, be the iconoclast never so hardy. In spite of his honesty
and brave words, Lionel, in the dim recesses of consciousness, knew that
he wished he could have said, "My dear, I love you and can afford to pay
for a home!" He knew that from the idealist's standpoint he was right,
but the purest cups of nectar may reveal an acid in the lees. Still, he
drank his nectar and was very glad.

Presently his face grew graver. "I must wait though," he reflected. "One
can't propose the moment one hears she is a widow--too indecent.
Besides, she may not love me.... I must give her time.... At least,
though, I'll go with her to Constantinople. If she won't think of me as
a husband or lover, by jove! I'll be her dragoman! She mustn't go there
alone.... And now, let's break the news to Winifred."

He found Miss Arkwright in the library and told her of her sister's
intention to come down to The Quiet House. To his disgust she began to
make difficulties.

"You know, Mr. Mortimer, that we do not agree on her choice of a
career----"

"Yes, yes," he said impatiently. "I know all that. But this is a serious
business. She is going to Turkey in a day or two, a