anything but absurd?" he answered
bitterly. "I am simply an engineer on my vacation, who when that is over
will return to the wilds. Oh, Marcia, how can I in common decency ask you
to marry me? I can not yet, but I do ask you to let me love you, to
forgive me for telling you of my feeling for you, and believe me when I
tell you that I would not have had the courage to mention the subject if
I did not feel almost sure of a change of fortune. I don't want to tell
you just yet. I'm trying not to tell you; but dearest, loveliest Marcia,
I believe I'm on the eve of success. I can almost close my fingers around
it, and then you will let me tell you I love you, won't you, dearest?
Yes, laugh at me, I don't mind."

"But suppose, just suppose this wonderful fortune never does
materialize," she said half-teasingly but still tremulously, a smile on
her lips and a tear in her eye. "What then?"

"Never suppose it. It can't help it," he cried confidently. "Why even now
I can see particles of gold in the air. To-morrow, next day, the day
afterward, we shall have our cake. Will you eat it with me, Marcia, if
it's a nice, brown, plum-y cake?"

"You make too many conditions," she said demurely. "I don't care for very
rich cake myself. Suppose the cake should not turn out particularly well
in the baking? Wouldn't you offer me a piece anyway--Bobby?"

Again he looked up the path and down the path; people still hastening to
and fro. Arcady was infested with toilers hurrying home to supper.

"I'd try not to," he said manfully, keeping his eyes resolutely away from
hers. "Oh, Marcia, I can't be certain, I'd try not to. I couldn't bear
to see you eating underdone cake. It would only mean misery to you. Your
manner of life--"

"My manner of life!" she interrupted him scornfully. "Ah, what is my
manner of life! Do you fancy that I am deaf as a post and blind as a bat?
Do you think that I do not know some of the things that are spoken of me,
by Mrs. Ames, for instance, or Horace Penfield, or even Edith Symmes? Do
you fancy any word of that tittle-tattle escapes me? Sometimes it is
repeated, or hinted in malice; sometimes as from Bea or Kitty in fright,
as a warning, almost a prayer. I know that I lay myself open to gossip;
but I can not help it, at least at present. It is impossible for me to
alter things just now."

"I know," he murmured tenderly. "I am sure of it. I have realized
something of this from the first moment that I met you. Bu