"But--it's raining."

"All the better. It will be we two and the world away, Mary."

"And there isn't anything to say."

"Oh, yes, there is--oodles."

"And Aunt Isabelle will be worried."

He drew the rug up around her and settled back as placidly as if the

hands on the moon face of the clock on the post-office tower were not

pointing to midnight. "Aunt Isabelle has been told," he informed her,

"that you may be a bit late. I wrote it on the supper card, and she

read it--and smiled."

He waited in silence until they had left the avenue, and were on the

driveway back of the Treasury which leads toward the river.

"Porter, this is a wild thing to do."

"I'm in a wild mood--a mood that fits in with the rain and wind, Mary.

I'm in such a mood that if the times were different and the age more

romantic, I would pick you up and put you on my champing steed and

carry you off to my castle."

He laughed, and for the moment she was thrilled by his masterfulness.

"But, alas, my steed is a taxi--the age is prosaic--and you--I'm afraid

of you, Contrary Mary."

They were on the Speedway now, faintly illumined, showing a row of

waving willow trees, spectrally outlined against a background of gray

water.

"I'm afraid of you. I have always been. Even when you were only ten

and I was fifteen. I would shake in my shoes when you looked at me,

Mary; you were the only one then--you are the only one--now."

Her hand lay on the outside of the rug. He put his own over it.

"Ever since you said to-night that you didn't care--there's been

something singing--in my brain, and it has said, 'make her care, make

her care.' And I'm going to do it. I'm not going to trouble you or

worry you with it--and I'm going to take my chances with the rest. But

in the end I'm going to--win."

"There aren't any others."

"If there aren't there will be. You've kept yourself protected so far

by that little independent manner of yours, which scares men off. But

some day a man will come who won't be scared--and then it will be a

fight to the finish between him--and me."

"Oh, Porter, I don't want to think of marrying--not for ten million

years."

"And yet," he said prophetically, "if to-morrow you should meet some

man who could make you think he was the Only One, you'd marry him in

the face of all the world."




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