only happy! I did it to make you happy."

She heard him catch his breath. "How much do you love me?" he said.

(Oh, how long it was since he had talked that way--asking the sweet,
unanswerable question of happy love!--how long since he had spoken with
so much precious foolishness!) "How _much_? Why, Maurice, I love you so
that sometimes, when I see you talking to other people--even these
tiresome people here in the house, I could just die! I want you all to
myself! I--I guess I feel about you the way Bingo feels about me," she
said, trying to joke--but there were tears in her eyes.

"I'm not always ... what I ought to be," he said; "I am not--" (the path
was very dim)--"awfully good. I--"

"I suppose I'm naturally jealous," she confessed; "I could die for you,
Maurice; but I couldn't share your little finger! Do you remember, on
our wedding day, you made me promise to be jealous? Well, I _am_." She
laughed--and he was dumb. There, on the roof, Truth seemed as inevitable
as Law. It did not seem inevitable now. He had lost his way among the
stars. He could not find words to begin his story. But words overflowed
on Eleanor's lips!... "Sometimes I get to thinking about myself--I _am_
older than you, you know, a little. Not that it matters, really; but
when I see you with other people, and you seem to enjoy talking to
them--it nearly kills me! And you _do_ like to talk to them. You even
like to talk to--Edith, who is rude to me!" Her words poured out
sobbingly: "Why, _why_ am I not enough for you? You are enough for me!"

He was silent.

"And ... and ... and we haven't a baby," she said in a whisper, and
dropped her face on his knee.

He tried to lift her, but his soul was sinking within him; dropping
down--down from the awful heights. Yet still he caught at Truth! "Dear,
don't! As for people, I may talk to them; I may even--even be with them,
or seem to like them, and--and do things, that--I don't love anybody but
you, Eleanor; but I--I--"

It was a final clutch at the Hand that holds the stars. But his
entreating voice broke, for she was kissing his confession from his
lips. Those last words--"I don't love anybody but you"--folded her in
complete content! "Dear," she said, "that's all I want--that you don't
love anybody but me." She laid her wet cheek against his in silence.

What could he do but be silent, too? What could he do but choke down the
confessing, redeeming words that were on his lips? So he did choke