husiasm which left her breathless, but
beatified. "I knew when I first saw you what we desired," said the old
man, "and my son knew. All that I have is yours both now and
afterwards--"

Dinner was a candle-lighted feast, with heart-shaped ices at the end.

"How sure you were," Emily told her lover, smiling.

"I was not sure. But I set the stage for success. It was only thus
that I kept up my courage. There were so many chances that the curtain
might drop on darkness--," his hand went over hers. "If it had been
that way, I should have let the ices melt and the violets die--."

After dinner they went over the house. "Why should we wait," Ulrich
had said, "you and I? There is nothing to wait for. Tell me what you
want changed in this old house, and then come to it, and to my heart."

It was, she found, such a funny old place. It had been furnished by
men, and by German men at that. There was heaviness and stuffiness,
and all the bric-a-brac was fat and puffy, and all the pictures were
highly-colored, with the women in them blonde and buxom, and the men
blond and bold--.

But Ulrich's room was not stuffy or heavy. The windows were wide open,
and the walls were white, and the cover on the canopy bed was white,
and there were two pictures, one of Lincoln and one of Washington, and
that was all.

"And when I have your picture, it will be perfect," he told her.
"Where I can see you when I wake, and pray to you before I go to sleep."

"But why," she probed daringly, "do you want my picture?"

"Because you are so--beautiful--"

It was not to be wondered that such worship went to Miss Emily's head.
She slipped out of the dried sheath of the years which had saddened and
aged her, and emerged lovely as a flower over which the winter has
passed and which blooms again.

"I don't want to change anything," Emily told her lover as they went
downstairs, "at least not very much. I shall keep all of the lovely
old carved things--with the fat cupids."

As she lay awake that night, reviewing it all, she thought suddenly of
Bruce McKenzie's letter in her apron pocket. The apron was in the Toy
Shop, and it was not therefore until the next morning that she read the
letter.

In it Dr. McKenzie asked her to marry him.

"I should like to think that when I come back, you will be waiting for
me, Emily. I am a very lonely man. I want someone who will sympathize
and understand. I want someone who will love Jean, and