"As though that were news to me."

"Did he tell you?"

"I guessed. Last night in the conservatory." He added with a sudden feeling of good will: "Gladys is much nicer than I thought, really."

"She's awfully in love. I'm so glad."

"When will it be announced?"

"Next week."

"Heaven be praised!"

In a desire to come to a more intimate sharing of confidences he told her of his fears.

"Louise Varney, a vaudeville actress!" said Doris, with a figurative drawing in of her skirts.

"Oh, there's nothing against her," he protested, "excepting perhaps her chaperone! Only Fred's susceptible, you know--terribly so--and easily led."

"Yes, but people don't marry such persons--you can get infatuated and all that--but you don't marry them!" she said indignantly. She shrugged her shoulders. "It's all right to be--to be a man of the world, but not that!"

He hesitated, afraid of going further, of finding a sudden disillusionment in the worldly att.i.tude her words implied. A certain remorse, a feeling of loyalty betrayed impelled him on, as though all danger could be avoided by forever settling his future. Their conversation by degrees a.s.sumed a more intimate turn, until at length they came to speak of themselves.

"Doris, I have something to ask you," he said, plunging in miserably.

"We have never really--formally been engaged, have we?"

"The idea! Of course we have," she said, laughing. "It's only you who wouldn't have it announced because--because you were too proud or some other ridiculous reason!"

"Well, now I want it announced." He met her glance and added: "And I want you to announce at the same time the date of the wedding."

He had said it--irrevocably decided for the path of conscience and loyalty, and it seemed to him as though a great load had shifted from his shoulders.

"Bojo! Do you mean--now, soon!"

"Just that. Doris, when this deal is settled up--and I'll know this week--I'm going to have close on to two hundred thousand--on my own hook, not counting what I'll get from the pool. I've plunged. I've put every cent I had in it or could borrow," he said hastily, avoiding an explanation of just what he had done. "I've risked everything on the turn--"

"But supposing something went wrong?"

"It won't! This week, we're going to hammer Pittsburgh & New Orleans down below thirty: I know. The point is now--when that's all safe--I want you to marry me."

"I have a quarter of a million in my own name. Father gave us each that three years ago."

He hesitated.

"Do you need that very much? I'd rather you'd start--"

"Oh, Bojo, why? If you've got that, why shouldn't I?"

He wavered before this argument.

"I would rather, Doris, we started on less, on what I myself have got.

I've thought it over a good deal. I think it would mean a great deal to us to start out that way--to have me feel you were by my side, helping me. It _is_ pride, but pride means all to a man, Doris."

"If I only used it for dresses and jewels--just for myself?" she said after a moment. "You want me to look as beautiful as the other women, and we aren't going to drop out of society, are we?"

"No. Keep it then," he said abruptly.

"I won't take a cent from father," she said virtuously, and was furious when he laughed.

"And you are willing to give up all the rest, now, and be just plain Mrs. Crocker?"

She nodded, watching him askance.

"When?"

"In May at the close of the social season--b.u.t.terfly."

He had begun with a hunger in his heart to reach depths in hers, and he ended with laughter, with a feeling of being defrauded.

They stopped at Simpson's for a cool drink of cider and were on again, pa.s.sing through wintry forests, with green Christmas trees against the creamy stretches where rabbit paths ran into dark entanglements. All at once they were in the open again, sweeping through a sudden factory village, Jenkinstown, stagnant with the exhaustion of the Sunday's rest.

"There, aren't you glad you didn't begin there?" she said gaily, with a nick of the whip toward the grim gray line of barracks that crowded against the street.

"You never would have married me then," he said.

"Oh, ask me anything but to be _poor_!" she said, shuddering.

"She might at least have lied," he thought grimly. He gazed with curiosity at this glimpse of factory life, at the dulled faces of women, wrapped in gay shawls, staring at them; at the sluggish loiterers on the corners, and the uncleanly hordes of children, who cried impertinently after them, recalling his father's words:--"a great mixed horde to be turned into intelligent, useful American citizens!" Squalid and hopelessly commonplace it seemed to him, cruelly devoid of pleasure or joy in the living. But such as these had placed him where he was, with an opportunity to turn in a year what in the lifetime of generations they could never approach.

The spectacle affected Doris like a disagreeable smell.

"I hate to think such people exist," she said, frowning.

"But they do exist," he said slowly.

"Yes, but I don't want to think of it. Heavens, to be poor like that!"

"It's late; we'd better be going back," he said.

They came back enveloped in the falling dusk, Doris running on gaily, quite delighted now at the prospect of their coming marriage, making a hundred plans for the ordering of the establishment, debating the question of an electric or an open car to start with, the proper quarter to seek an apartment, and the number of servants, while Bojo, silently, rather grim, listened, thinking of the look which would come into some one's eyes when their decision was told.

At the porte-cochere Gladys and Patsie came rushing out with frightened faces. Fred had caught the last train home after a call from New York.

Bojo, with a sinking feeling, seized the note he had left for him.

Roscy telephoned. There's a rumor that a group have been cornering Pittsburgh & New Orleans all this while. If so there'll be the devil to pay in the morning. Forshay's been wild to get you. Get back somehow. If in time get the Harlem 6:42 at Jenkinstown. In haste.

FRED.

"Can I make the 6:42 at Jenkinstown?" he cried to the groom.