and looked at him earnestly.
In the half-light, white and clear from the freshly plastered walls, her
face was like alabaster. "Dear Paul, isn't that what getting married
means--to learn how to be really, really close to each other all the
time. There isn't anything else worth getting married for, is there?
_Is_ there?"

Her lover looked down into her eyes, into her sweet, earnest face, and
could not speak. Finally, his hand at his throat, "Oh, Lydia, you're too
good for me!" he said huskily. "You're too good for any man!"

"No, no, no!" she protested with a soft energy. "I'm weak, as weak as
water. You must give me a lot of your strength or I'll go under."

"God knows I'll give you anything I have."

"Then, never let things come between us--never, never, never! I'm all
right as long as I'm close to you. If we just keep that, nothing else
can matter."

They were silent, standing with clasped hands in the passage-way that
was to be the thoroughfare of their common life. It was a moment that
was to come back many times to Lydia's memory during later innumerable,
hurried daily farewells. The thought of the significance of the place
came to her mind now. She said softly, "This must be a foretaste of what
we're to have under this roof. How good it seems not to be in a hurry
to--"

With a start Paul came to himself from his unusual forgetfulness of his
surroundings. "We _ought_ to be in a hurry now, dearest. Dr. Melton
keeps me stirred up all the time to take care of you, and I'm sure I'm
not doing that to let you stand here in this cold evening air. Come, let
me show you--the closet under the stairs, you know, and the place for
the refrigerator."

Lydia yielded to his care for her with her sweet passivity, echoed his
opinion about the details, and ran beside him down the driveway, to
catch the next car to Endbury, with a singular light grace for a tall
woman encumbered with long skirts.

In spite of their haste, they missed the car and were obliged to wait
for a quarter of an hour beside the tracks. They talked cheerfully on
indifferent topics, the sense of intimate comradeship gilding all they
said. In their hearts was fresh the memory of the scene in the new
house. They looked at each other and smiled happily in the intervals of
their talk.

Paul was recapitulating to Lydia the advantages of the location of their
house. "We are in the vanguard of a new movement in American life," he
said, "the movement away fro