marshal her arguments, she found that they had fled.

"Oh, but I couldn't," she answered. "And besides, there are so many
things I ought to do. I--I haven't any clothes."

But this was a plea he could not be expected to recognize. He saw no
reason why she could not buy as many as she wanted after the ceremony.

"Is that all?" he demanded.

"No--that isn't all. Can't you see that--that we ought to wait, Hugh?"

"No," he exclaimed, "No I can't see it. I can only see that every moment
of waiting would be a misery for us both. I can only see that the
situation, as it is to-day, is an intolerable one for you."

She had not expected him to see this.

"There are others to be thought of," she said, after a moment's
hesitation.

"What others?"

The answer she should have made died on her lips.

"It seems so-indecorous, Hugh."

"Indecorous!" he cried, and pushed back his chair and rose. "What's
indecorous about it? To leave you here alone in a hotel in New York would
not only be indecorous, but senseless. How long would you put it off? a
week--a month--a year? Where would you go in the meantime, and what would
you do?"

"But your friends, Hugh--and mine?"

"Friends! What have they got to do with it?"

It was the woman, now, who for a moment turned practical--and for the
man's sake. She loved, and the fair fabric of the future which they were
to weave together, and the plans with which his letters had been filled
and of which she had dreamed in exile, had become to-day as the stuff of
which moonbeams are made. As she looked up at him, eternity itself did
not seem long enough for the fulfilment of that love. But he? Would the
time not come when he would demand something more? and suppose that
something were denied? She tried to rouse herself, to think, to consider
a situation in which her instinct had whispered just once--there must be
some hidden danger: but the electric touch of his hand destroyed the
process, and made her incapable of reason.

"What should we gain by a week's or a fortnight's delay," he was saying,
"except so much misery?"

She looked around the hotel sitting-room, and tried to imagine the
desolation of it, stripped of his presence. Why not? There was reason in
what he said. And yet, if she had known it, it was not to reason she
yielded, but to the touch of his hand.

"We will be married to-day," he decreed. "I have planned it all. I have
bought the 'Adhemar', the yacht which I chartered la