"You blooming old cynic! You poor old he-Ca.s.sandra! Where did you get all your wisdom? Just wait until you find some one--"

"Huh! I have found her. Or rather she's found me. I could let her make a fool of me. But I won't. A long life and my own life for me. I'm wearing a sign, 'Nothing doing!' You'd better get one just like it."

David roared again.

"All right, laugh!" growled d.i.c.k. "Rope, tie and brand yourself. And then some of these days when you're one woman's property and you find the other woman is just around the corner waiting-- That's another thing, Davy."

But David turned his back on the counselor and fled. What did d.i.c.k know about it?

The dream was being realized, the lonely gaps filled. He was to have some one of his own to love and to serve. This time his heart was a captive for life; any one who had been in love a baker's dozen of times could tell that. He expected great things of love. He saw it as something exquisitely fine and beautiful and yet proof against the vandal fingers of familiarity; a joy always, a light for the dark places, a guide and comrade in stressful times; and everlasting as the hills. Just as the poets have always sung of it. Would any man wear a sign, "Nothing doing!" in the face of that?

The last afternoon of Shirley's visit came, clear and crisp, a strong west wind lifting the haze from the tinted hills. They pretended to play golf, but their strokes were perfunctory, absent-minded. They talked little and that in strangely low tones, always soberly. After a while they gave up the pretense, sought a seat on a secluded sunny slope and fell into a long silence.

"Shirley!" he broke it at length.

"Yes, David?"

"I'll hate to see you go back."

"I know. I'll hate to go, too."

"It--hurts me to think of your going back to work."

"Oh, I'm used to it." She smiled. A world of sweet courage was in that smile.

"Shirley--_dear_!"

She raised her eyes to his.

"A poor man--I suppose he's a coward to ask a woman to share-- But it wouldn't be for always. You believe that, don't you?"

"I believe that."

"I'd try to make up for the lack of money with other things--worth more than money maybe. Are you willing to be poor with me for a while?"

"Yes, David."

He sat very still. His face went white. A happiness, so intense that it hurt, flooded his being.

"You really--mean that?" he whispered.

Tears of tenderness stood in her eyes. She had the sense of having found a rare treasure, worth any sacrifice. She was a little awed by it and lifted to a plane she had never reached before.

"Of course, I do." She laughed tremulously. "We'll wait six months, to give you a chance to get ready. Then I'll come to you. We'll start very small at first and live on what we have, whatever it is. If it's only seventy-five dollars a month, we'll hold our heads as high as if we had millions. We'll make the fight together. I used to think I never could do that. But now I want to. And then when your success comes it will be partly _mine_."

Her head was lifted in the pretty brave gesture. The glow of a crimson sunset was about her. In her eyes was the glow of the flame he had lighted.

If only the spirit of sunset might abide with us always! . . . .

The witch often turns herself into an old cat and plays with us poor mice before she rends us.

Almost from the beginning of the engagement David's clients increased in number. During the six months which Shirley had set as the term of their waiting his income was almost as big as that of the whole year before; partly because he was taken in by d.i.c.k Holden--who had the knack of getting business--on a commission to which that energetic young cynic felt himself unequal. The fee thus shared was a substantial one.

"Our love," David wrote to Shirley, "was born under a lucky star. I believe we are going to have more than we expected. That makes me very happy--on your account."

Nevertheless, when the six months were at an end, he was not out of debt.

"David, dear," Shirley wrote, when she had been scarce a month gone, "couldn't you manage to come on for a few days? Maizie thinks I'm crazy, and I want her to see you and be convinced that I'm not. And I want to show off my wonderful lover to my friends."

David, nothing loath, went--a night's journey into the West, to a city where hotels mounted high in the air and rates mounted with them. This journey became a monthly event. And when they were together, thought of the exchequer took wings. There were theater parties, at which tired Maizie was a happy though protestant third. There were boxes of candy and flowers, seeing which Shirley would cry, "Oh, you extravagant boy!"

in a tone that made David very glad of his extravagance. They loved; therefore they were rich. What had they to do with caution and economy?

"We can be engaged only once," they said. "Let us make it beautiful.

Let us have something to remember."

Money, it seemed, was necessary to a memorable engagement.

Maizie at sight of him opened her heart. Shirley's friends hugged and kissed her and declared her lover to be all she had promised. The rich aunt regarded him with a disfavor she was at some pains to voice.

"Shirley tells me," she informed him, with the arrogant a.s.surance of the very rich, "that you're poor. Then I think you're foolish to get married--to Shirley, at least. _I_ wanted her to take Sam Hardy. I hope you understand my checks will stop when she's married."

"But you'll still give her your love, won't you?"

"Of course, but what's that got to do with it?"

"Having that," said David, with the arrogant a.s.surance of young men in love, "Shirley will be content."

The rich aunt stared. "Humph!" she sniffed, "You're not even grown up.

On your own head be it!"

Shirley took some risks in inviting these visits. The picture David had got had her and Maizie living in dingy rooms, marks of hardship and privation thick around them. In fact, he found her a charming hostess in a cozy little apartment, comfortably furnished, with pretty dishes on the table and even a few pictures on the walls. And clearly, to eyes that saw, it was homely faithful Maizie whose arduous but well-paid secretaryship financed this menage; Maizie who, returning home tired from her long day, got the dinner; Maizie who washed the dishes, that Shirley's hands might not be spoiled, and did the mending when the weekly wash came back. Shirley set the table, sewed on jabots and did yards of tatting. Her "work" consisted of presiding over the reference room of a public library, telling shabby uninteresting young men where to find works on evolution and a.s.syrian temples and Charlemagne. This position was hers because her rich aunt's husband had political influence and her salary, together with the checks from Aunt Clara--not so big as the latter would have had David suppose but still not to be sneezed at--generally went to buy "extras," little luxuries working girls do not often enjoy.

But David was in love; he saw only the mistress of his heart. And Shirley, who had the habit of contrasting what she had with what she wanted to have, did not see any risk incurred.

"It's been such a grind to-day," she sighed, one afternoon when David went to the library to escort her home. "Fussing half the day with a long-haired Dutchman who wanted to know all about the origin of fire worship. Why should any one want to know about the origin of fire worship?"

David didn't know, but thought it a shame she had to fuss with long-haired Dutchmen.

"It's so deadly dull," she went on in the same plaintive voice. "Oh, David, you don't know what a rescuer you are, taking me away from this.

I'll be so happy when we're in our own little home and I'll be _dependent_ again."

David's emotions were too deep for words but he gave her a look more eloquent than speech.

The experts are in accord as to the purblindness of love. No scales fell from his eyes, even when Maizie, on his next to last visit, made an occasion for a serious chat.

"David," she suggested a little timidly, "don't you think you and Shirley had better wait a little longer?"

He laughed at the notion. "Do you think we're not sure of ourselves?"