e could have this satisfaction there was no fear of being
unhappy. To create an atmosphere of happiness for others is to profit by
it at the same time.

He waited for Phillis impatiently, for she would bring him an echo of
her mother's joy, and it was a recompense that she owed him.

She arrived happy, smiling, penetrated with tenderness; but he observed
that she was keeping something from him, something that embarrassed her,
and yet she would not tell him what it was.

He was not disposed to admit that she could conceal anything from him,
and he questioned her.

"What are you keeping from me?"

"How can you suppose that I should keep anything from you?"

"Well, what is the matter? You know, do you not, that I read all your
thoughts in your eyes? Very well your eyes speak when your lips are
silent."

"I have a request to make of you, a prayer."

"Why do you not tell me?"

"Because I do not dare."

"Yet it does not seem to me that I show a disposition to make you
believe that I could refuse you anything."

"It is just that which is the cause of my embarrassment and reserve; I
fear to pain you at the moment when I would show you all the gratitude
and love in my heart."

"If you are going to give me pain, it is better not to make me wait."

She hesitated; then, before an impatient gesture, she decided to speak.

"I wish to ask you how you mean to be married?"

He looked at her in surprise.

"But, like every one else!"

"Every one?" she asked, persistently.

"Is there any other way of being married?"

"Yes."

"I do not in the least understand this manner of asking conundrums; if
you are alluding to a fashionable custom of which I know nothing, say so
frankly. That will not wound me, since I am the first to declare that I
know nothing of it. What do you wish?"

She felt his irritation increase, and yet she could not decide to say
what she wished.

"I have begun badly," she said. "I should have told you at first that
you will always find in me a wife who will respect your ideas and
beliefs, who will never permit herself to judge you, and still less to
seek to contend with them or to modify them. That you feel, do you not,
is neither a part of my nature nor of my love?"

"Conclude!" he said impatiently.

"I think, then," she said with timid hesitation, "that you will not say
that I fail in respect to your ideas in asking that our marriage take
place in church."

"But that was my intention."