d my thinking about it. Mother was . . .
I've told you how Mother was at that time. And what an unhappy time it
was at home. I was pretty busy at the house because she was away so
much. And Father and I hung together because there wasn't anybody else
to hang to: and all sorts of ugly things happened, and I didn't have the
time or the heart to think about being 'an urn too full.'"

She stopped, smiling happily, as though those had not been tragic words
which he had just spoken, thinking not of them but of something else,
which now came out, "And then, oh Neale, that day, on the piazza in
front of St. Peter's, when we stood together, and felt the spray of the
fountains blown on us, and you looked at me and spoke out. . . . Oh, Neale,
_Neale_, what a moment to have lived through! Well, when we went on into
the church, and I knelt there for a while, so struck down with joy that
I couldn't stand on my feet, all those wild bursts of excitement, and
incredulity and happiness, that kept surging up and drenching me . . . I
had a queer feeling, that awfully threadbare feeling of having been
there before, or felt that before; that it was familiar, although it was
so new. Then it came to me, 'Why, I have it, what I used to pray for.
Now at last I am the urn too full!' And it was true, I could feel, just
as I dreamed, the upsurging of the feeling, brimming over, boiling up,
brimming over. . . . And another phrase came into my mind, an English one.
I said to myself, 'The fullness of life.' Now I know what it is."

She turned to him, and caught at his hand. "Oh, Neale, now I _do_ know
what it is, how utterly hideous it would be to have to live without it,
to feel only the mean little trickle that seems mostly all that people
have."

"Well, I'll never have to get along without it, as long as I have you,"
he said confidently.

"And I refuse to live a _minute_, if it goes back on me!" she cried.

"I imagine that old folks would think we are talking very young,"
suggested the man casually.

"Don't speak of them!" She cast them away into non-existence with a
gesture.

They sank into a reverie, smiling to themselves.

"How the fountains shone in the sun, that day," she murmured; "the spray
they cast on us was all tiny opals and diamonds."

"You're sure you aren't going to be sorry to go back to America to live,
to leave all that?" asked the man. "I get anxious about that sometimes.
It seems an awful jump to go away from such beaut