which her hesitating, timid voice breaks at last.

"Does it?"

"Yes, I think it does," he answered shortly. "The man must have
enough to support both, or he has no right to marry at all."

The girl's hands lock themselves together convulsively, unseen
behind her slight waist, laced so skilfully into the fashionable
bodice.

There is a hard decision in the incisive tones that does not belong
to the mere expression of a general theory--a cold authority and a
weight of personal conviction that turns the words into a statement
of rigid principle.

The girl feels almost dizzy, and she closes her hot eyelids
suddenly to shut out the line of that hard, obstinate chin.

"People's ideas on what is enough to support both vary so much,"
she says quietly, with well-bred indifference in her tone, while
her heart beats wildly as she waits for his next remark.

"Well, what would you consider enough yourself?" he says coldly,
after a slight pause, turning a little more towards her.

The red light glows steadily on her skirts, and he can see the
graceful outline of her knees under them, and one small foot upon
the hearthrug; the rest of the form is veiled in the shadow, except
one rounded line of a shoulder and the glint of light hair above.

He looks down at her, and there seems a sudden, nervous expansion
in his frame; outwardly there is not the faintest impatient
movement. He waits quietly for her reply.

The girl hesitates as she looks at him. To her, in her absorbing
love for the man before her, the question is an absurd mockery.

To reduce to a certain number of pounds this "enough," when for her
anything or nothing would be enough!

"I would rather starve to death in your arms than live another day
without you," is the current running under all her thoughts, and it
confuses them and makes it difficult for her to speak.

What shall she answer? To name a sum too small in his eyes will
be as great an error as to name one too large. He would only
think her a silly, sentimental girl, who knows nothing of what
she is talking about, and who has no knowledge and appreciation
of the responsibilities of life.

Besides, to name a very small income will be to conjure up before
his eyes the picture of a mean, pitiful, sordid existence, from
which she feels, with painful distinctness, he would turn with
disgust.

Poor? Yes, he has told her that he is poor, and she believes it;
but somehow--by contracting debt, probably--sh