would understand, surrounding her
with an atmosphere of spiritual harmony which she recognized was the
thing in all the world which mattered most to her, "Paul dear, I never
told you--there's nothing to tell, really--but when I went to the
Mallory's house-party in February I rode from here to Hardville with Mr.
Rankin and had a long talk with him. You don't mind, do you?"

Her lover drew her hand within his arm and gave it an affectionate
pressure. "You may not know things, Lydia, as you say, but you are the
_nicest_ girl! the straightest! I knew that at the time--Miss Burgess
told me. But I'm glad you've given me a chance to say how sorry I was
for you last autumn when everybody was pestering you so about him. I
knew how you felt--better than you did, I'll bet I did! I wasn't a bit
afraid. I knew you could never care for anybody but me. Why, you're
_mine_, Lydia, I'm yours, and that's all there is to it. You know it as
well as I do."

"_I know it when I'm with you_," she told him with a bravely honest,
unspoken reservation.

He laughed his appreciation of her insistent sincerity. "Well, when
you're married won't you be with me all the time? So that's fixed! And
as for meeting somebody by accident on the street-cars--why, you foolish
darling, you're not marrying a Turk, or an octopus--but an American."

Lydia was silent, but her look was enough to fill the pause richly. She
was savoring to the full the joy of close community of spirit which had
been so rare in her pleasant life of material comfort, and she was
saying a humble prayer that she might be good enough to be worthy of it,
that she might be wise enough to make it the daily and hourly atmosphere
of her life with Paul.

"What are you thinking about, darling?" asked the other.

"I was thinking how lovely it's going to be to be really married and
come to know each other well. We don't know each other at all yet,
_really_, you know."

Paul was brought up short, as so often with Lydia, by an odd,
disconcerted feeling, half pleasure, half shock, from the discovery in
her of pages that he had not read, germs of ideas that had not come from
him. "Why, darling Lydia, what do you mean? We know each other through
and through!" he now protested. It gave a tang of the unexpected to her
uniform sweetness, this always having a corner still to turn which kept
her out of his sight. Paul was used to seeing most women achieve this
effect of uncertainty by the use of coquet