'd have been married two months ago. God knows I wish I
had, before--before all this happened!"

"Then listen to me, Nance." Philip spoke very quietly, but his eyes
burned into her soul. "There isn't any other woman, there never has
been, there never could be. I love you, and love you only, with my
whole soul, my whole strength----"

"But you said----" began Nancy, in a weak little voice.

"Never mind what I _said_," he answered, almost roughly. "I'd sworn
I'd never trouble you again without some sign from you. Yet the
instant I saw you, out there on the sidewalk, it was all I could do to
keep from kneeling down and kissing your blessed little shoes. But I
wouldn't have done it for fifteen thousand different worlds. Suddenly,
when you were talking about that damnable man"--Phil ground his teeth
savagely--"and his 'shoals of money,' that other idea occurred to
me--a last resort, a final, forlorn hope that if you had a spark of
feeling left for me you might show it then, and I made it all up out
of whole cloth."

"Philip, you're a brute!" The tears were falling now, but the wraith
of a smile hovered about the corners of Nancy's mouth.

"I know I am. I'm despicable, mean, cowardly, unmanly----"

"Hateful, paltry, contemptible." Nancy helped out his collection of
adjectives, but, strange to relate, her smile deepened.

"And--happy!" finished Phil, triumphantly. "Nance"---the tone was
masterful--"you've _got_ to marry me now, right off, to-night. I'm
never going to let you get away from me again. I don't care for all
the James Thorntons and all the filthy money in the world. Will you,
Little Girl?" The masterful tone gave place to one of pleading
tenderness. "Will you give it all up for the man who has never stopped
loving you and worshiping you for one single instant since the blessed
day when you first came into his life?"

"Oh, Phil, Phil, you wicked, contemptible old darling, if you hadn't
asked me to pretty soon, I--I'd have asked you. I've tried to get
along without you, and I just simply _can't_!"

"Nance, you're an angel!" cried Phil, rapturously. He leaned across
the table, with a fine disregard of appearances, and kissed Nancy's
hands. But nobody noticed it at all--except the waiter at a respectful
distance, secretly jubilant in the expectation of an unusually large
tip, and he didn't count. That is the beauty of those out-of-the-way
Bohemian restaurants--people are so absorbed in their own love-making
t