get married!" exclaimed Hannah, irrelevantly. "She's
been acting so queer lately, she's not been herself at all."

"Now there you go, borrowing trouble, mother," Edward exclaimed. He could
not take his eyes from Janet, but continued to regard her with
benevolence. "Lise'll get married some day. I don't suppose we can expect
another Mr. Ditmar...."

"Well," said Hannah, presently, "there's no use sitting up all night."
She rose and kissed Janet again. "I just can't believe it," she declared,
"but I guess it's so if you say it is."

"Of course it's so," said Edward.

"I so want you should be happy, Janet," said Hannah....

Was it so? Her mother and father, the dwarfed and ugly surroundings of
Fillmore Street made it seem incredible once more. And--what would they
say if they knew what had happened to her this day? When she had reached
her room, Janet began to wonder why she had told her parents. Had it not
been in order to relieve their anxiety--especially her mother's--on the
score of her recent absences from home? Yes, that was it, and because the
news would make them happy. And then the mere assertion to them that she
was to marry Ditmar helped to make it more real to herself. But, now that
reality was fading again, she was unable to bring it within the scope of
her imagination, her mind refused to hold one remembered circumstance
long enough to coordinate it with another: she realized that she was
tired--too tired to think any more. But despite her exhaustion there
remained within her, possessing her, as it were overshadowing her,
unrelated to future or past, the presence of the man who had awakened her
to an intensity of life hitherto unconceived. When her head touched the
pillow she fell asleep....

When the bells and the undulating scream of the siren awoke her, she lay
awhile groping in the darkness. Where was she? Who was she? The discovery
of the fact that the nail of the middle finger on her right hand was
broken, gave her a clew. She had broken that nail in reaching out to save
something--a vase of roses--that was it!--a vase of roses on a table with
a white cloth. Ditmar had tipped it over. The sudden flaring up of this
trivial incident served to re-establish her identity, to light a fuse
along which her mind began to run like fire, illuminating redly all the
events of the day before. It was sweet to lie thus, to possess, as her
very own, these precious, passionate memories of life lived at last to
fuln