ncle
Percival," she said with a renewed effort to penetrate the senile
abstraction in which he lived.

"Married!" repeated the old man, with an indignant surprise for which
she was entirely unprepared. "Married! Why, what on earth makes you do a
ridiculous thing like that? It's out of the question," he continued with
an angry vehemence, "it is utterly and absurdly out of the question."

For an instant it seemed to Laura that she had absolutely no response to
offer.

"But almost everyone marries in the end, you know," she said at last.

"I have lived very comfortably to be eighty-five," retorted Uncle
Percival, "and I never married."

"Oh, but you never fell in love," persisted Laura.

"In love? Tush!" protested the old man with scorn, "and why should you?
I have never felt the need of it."

"Well, I don't think one can help it sometimes," remonstrated Laura, a
little helplessly. "One doesn't always want it, but it comes anyway."

"Then if I didn't want it I wouldn't let it bother me," said Uncle
Percival, adding immediately. "What does Rosa think of this state of
things, I wonder--Rosa is a very sensible woman."

"Oh, she's heartily pleased--everybody is pleased but you."

Uncle Percival shook his head in stubborn disapproval. "People are
always pleased at the mistakes of others," he observed, "it's human
nature, I suppose, and they can't help it, but I tell you I've seen a
great deal too much of love all my life--and it's better left alone,
it's better left alone."

Rising dejectedly, he wandered off to his rabbits, while Laura, as soon
as the curtains at the door had fallen together again behind his
shrunken little figure, forgot him with that complete forgetfulness of
trivial details which is possible only to the mind that is in the
possession of an absorbing emotion. All hesitation, all uncertainty, all
disappointment, had been swept from her consciousness as if by a
destroying and purifying flame; and for the past few weeks she had lived
with that passionate swiftness of sensation which gives one an ecstatic
sense of rushing, like a winged creature, through crawling time. Life,
indeed, was winged for her at the moment; her soul flew; and she felt
her happiness beating like a caged bird within her breast. The agony of
the imprisoned creature was there also, for she loved blindly without
understanding why she loved--and yet it was this hidden mystery of her
passion, this divine miracle which attended its