"Oh, Mr. Percival," said Lena, "I do! How could I help it? But I could not dream of your loving poor little insignificant me."

"And how could I help it?" he said, mocking her. "Little, you may be, but this part is bigger than the whole world. You belong to me now, and I won't have you depreciate yourself."

"Oh, Mr. Percival, is it true?"

"Suppose you say 'd.i.c.k', and thank G.o.d that it is."

"d.i.c.k, d.i.c.k, d.i.c.k--it is," said Lena very softly, and she frankly put her arms around his neck, and her soft lips to his cold cheek, so that he lost himself in an ecstasy of delight and wonder.

So they sat in the doubtful shadow of a leafless maple, on a hard park bench, on a chilly November night, and though d.i.c.k was half frozen they were both more than happy. And they talked, in lovers' fashion, over the great fact, and how it all happened.

The mellow chimes of the city hall began to strike twelve--a most persistent hour, and Lena started into consciousness.

"d.i.c.k, I must go home," she said. "None of those girls, the nice girls, Miss Elton or any one like that, would do such an improper thing, would they?"

"I should think not," said d.i.c.k. "I wouldn't ask them to."

"And I wouldn't allow them," laughed Lena. "Now come, like a dear boy, and walk home with me."

"There are so many more things that I want to say," remonstrated d.i.c.k.

"Stop a moment under this light and let me see your eyes, Lena. You'll have to look up. I want to talk plain business to you. First, you'll give up this reporting folly, won't you?"

"To-morrow," said Lena joyously.

[Ill.u.s.tration: They talked in lovers' fashion--Page 216]

"What an admirably obedient wife you are going to make! But I'm glad you hate it. If ever you feel a mad desire to take it up again, we'll go into the library together and write up _G.o.dey's Lady's Book_. I want your life to be sweet and sheltered and filled with good things now."

"Oh, d.i.c.k, to think of that kind of a life coming to me!"

"It ought to have come to you long ago. It was bound to come, because it belongs to you. But things being as they are, you must give yourself into my keeping as soon as possible, sweetheart. There's no reason why we shouldn't be married at once, or nearly so, is there, dear?"

Here Lena hesitated, a little in doubt whether she ought to show maiden reluctance, and her lover went on with his argument.

"You are so alone, dear. Don't let any foolish hesitation prolong this bad time of yours."

"What about my mother?" demanded Lena, with a sudden descent to the region of hard facts.

"Do you want her to live with us?" d.i.c.k asked with a gulp.

"No, I don't!" Lena answered so sharply that d.i.c.k started in surprise, and she gathered herself together.

"It would take a long time for me to explain things to you," she went on in gentler accents. "But, d.i.c.k, mother and I are not very happy together. I'll tell you all about it some time. Perhaps she would be just as contented to live somewhere else."

"Very well," said d.i.c.k with a sense of relief. "We must make her comfortable, of course." In reality n.o.body else's comfort made a rap's difference just then. "I dare say we can find some jolly little apartment and somebody to take care of her."

"Hire somebody for her to find fault with," said Lena, with a return of acid. "What about your mother?"

"Oh, I couldn't let mother live anywhere but in the dear old home. It's too big and lonely for her by herself, so we must share it with her. And no other place would ever have the flavor of home, either to her or to me."

Lena stopped short in her progress.

"Does the house belong to you or to her?"

"Technically to me, I believe--not that it makes the slightest difference, dear."

"Then I should be mistress of it, not she?"

"I'm sure she'd be only too glad to turn the housekeeping cares over to your pretty little hands," said d.i.c.k, smiling, but a little uneasily.

"She's a good deal of an invalid, you know. But there's plenty of time to think of all these details. I suppose you've had to worry about the little things until it's become a habit," he added in a kind of apology to himself.

"I've been a bond-slave so long," said Lena, "that I'd like to feel perfectly free and mistress of everything around me." She straightened her back and squared her soft shoulders.

"So you shall be!" answered d.i.c.k happily. "Even of your husband."

"Oh, that, of course," said Lena with an enchanting pout. "Now here we are, and it's very late. You must go. Good night."

"Good night," said d.i.c.k. "I suppose I must not keep you. To think I have the unbelievable good fortune to kiss you good night, sweetheart."

Mrs. Quincy turned over in the lumpy bed which she and her daughter shared and said, with a querulousness undiminished by her sleepiness, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Lena Quincy, gallivanting around at this hour of night. It ain't decent. But there!"

"I guess I know my business," Lena snapped.

She turned out the gas to undress in the dark rather than encourage her mother's conversation. She needed to think. An awful problem had just presented itself. How was she to get a trousseau?

It was in another mood that d.i.c.k Percival walked home. Whenever anything very great and wonderful happens to us, we are apt to bow our heads and cry, "What am I, that this should be given to me?" Doubtless he is the n.o.blest man who most often feels this exultant humility. This was d.i.c.k's hour on the mountain. The depth of his own tenderness, the deliciousness of his pa.s.sion swept over him like a revelation, as he asked himself in wonder how it could be that this love had sprung up at once, like Aphrodite from the waves, where no one could have suspected such a marvel. He himself had been without realization of how his pa.s.sing interest had deepened its roots until now they fed on every part of him.

Love had startled him like a stroke of lightning out of a clear sky, but it was evident that it was no light that flashed out and then disappeared. It had come to stay.

Then came self-reproach. He remembered with hot cheeks that he had actually joked with Ellery about her in early days, and let himself be bantered in return--cad that he was, incapable of appreciating at first sight the woman he was to love. He had thought her an exquisite trifle, almost too illusive to be taken seriously. Now that very illusiveness was the thing that gripped him closest, like poetry and music and all the finer elements of life, the most impossible to explain, the most supreme in their dominion. Beauty meant all this. He found himself repeating, "Beauty is truth. Truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." And Lena was beautiful. How beautiful! He trembled in flesh and spirit at the vision of her face turned up to him out of the black November darkness, at the memory of the fine texture of her cheeks and lips.

He did not stop to ask himself whether he and Keats were agreed in their definition of beauty. Moreover, poor Keats never had the delight of anything so pink and golden and blue-eyed as Lena Quincy.

CHAPTER XIII

AN AWAKENING

A little scrawl of a note, delivered just after breakfast at Mr. Elton's door, brought Madeline to visit Mrs. Percival, who, like her mother, seemed to be in continual need of her.

She found that lady lying in her favorite chair in the library--the chair that had been her refuge in the days of her early widowhood, that had comfortably housed her when books carried her away from her own world of sorrows and problems into the world of illusions, the chair in which she had dreamed of the great things that were to come into a younger life, not her own, and yet deeply her own,--her son's.

Now she lay back in it with clasped hands, thinner than usual and with eyes sadder. Madeline came in like a young Hebe, glowing with health and vigor, and infinitely tender toward fragility.

"You are ill, dear mother Percival," cried the girl, dropping to her knees and slipping an arm behind her friend's back in an unconscious att.i.tude of protection.