a good husband who
loved and cherished his wife as on the day he married her, and protected
her from all the asperities of reality; a good father--he had almost an
actual vision of the children who would carry on his work in
life--girls of Lydia's beauty and sweetness, boys with his energy and
uprightness--and there was Lydia, too, the Lydia of twenty years from
now--in the full bloom of physical allurement still, a gracious hostess,
a public-spirited matron, lending the luster of his name to all worthy
charities indorsed by the best people, laying down with a firm good
taste dictates as to the worthy social development of the town. Before
this vision there rose up in him the ardent impulse to immediate effort
which is the sign manual of the man of action. He stirred and flung his
arm out.

"It's all up to me," he said aloud. "I can do it if I go after it hard
enough. I've got to make good for Lydia's sake and mine. She must have
the best I can get--the very best I know how to get for her."

A sound behind him made him catch his breath. He was trembling as he
turned about and saw Lydia coming swiftly up the driveway. "Good
Heavens, how I love her!" he thought as he ran down to meet her.

He was trembling when he took her in his arms, folding her in that close
embrace of surprised rapture at finding everything real, and no dream,
which is the unique joy of betrothal. He would not let her speak for a
moment, pressing his lips upon hers. When he released her, she cried in
a whisper, "Oh, it's wonderful how when you're close to me everything
else just isn't in the world!"

"That's being in love, Lydia," Paul told her with a grave thankfulness.

"I don't mean," she went on, with her ever-present effort to express
honestly her meaning, "I don't mean just--just being really
close--having your arms around me, though that always makes me forget
things, too--but being--_feeling_ close, you know--inside. Not having
any inner corner where we're not together--the way we are now--the way I
knew we should be when I saw you running down to meet me. I always know
the minute I see you whether it's going to be this way." She added, a
little wistfully, "Sometimes, you know, it isn't."

Paul lifted her up to the porch and led her across into the hallway.
Here he took her in his arms again and said with a shaken accent:
"Dearest Lydia, dearest! I wish it were always the way you want it--"

Lydia dropped her head back on his shoulder