“Ain’t it great?” said Pearl.

He stood close to her, trembling from the faintest contact with her loveliness.  He wished to kiss her-he must kiss her.  But he was afraid.  Pearl was sympathetic.  She divined his trouble, and in the deep shadow she adroitly did it herself.  Then she rebuked his boldness.

“Say, but you’re the quick little worker, seems to me!”

For a moment he was incapable of speech, standing mute, her warm hand in his.

“It’s been a dream,” he managed at last.  “Just like a dream!  Now you belong to me, don’t you?”

“Sure, if you want to put it that way,” said Pearl “Come on! there’s the music again.”

At the door she was taken from him by the audacious mill foreman.  Wilbur was chilled.  Pearl had instantly recovered her public, or ballroom, manner.  Could it be that she had not been rightly uplifted by the greatness of their moment?  Did she realize all it would mean to them?  But she was meltingly tender when at last they swayed in the waltz to “Home, Sweet Home.”  And it was he who bore her off under the witching moon to the side entrance of the Mansion.  They lingered a moment in the protecting shadows.  Pearl was chatty—­not sufficiently impressed, it seemed to him, with the sweet gravity of this crisis.

“We’re engaged now,” he reminded her.  Pearl laughed lightly.

“Have it your own way, kid!  Wha’d you say your name was?”

She kissed him again.  Then he wandered off in the mystic night, far over a world reeling through golden moonshine, to reach his dark but glowing little room at an hour that would have disquieted Winona.  It was the following day that he cheered her by displaying a new attention to his apparel, and it was before the ensuing Friday night dance that he had submitted his hands to her for embellishment—­talking casually of love at first sight.

There followed for him a time of fearful delight, not unmarred by spells of troubled wonder.  Pearl was not exclusively enough his.  She danced with other men; she chatted with them as with her peers.  She seemed even to encourage their advances.  He would have preferred that she found these repulsive, but she continued gay, even hard, under his chiding.

“Tut, tut!  I been told I got an awfully feminine nature.  A girl of my type is bound to have gentleman friends,” she protested.

He aged under this strain.  He saw now that he must abandon his easy view about his future.  He must, indeed, plan his life.  He must choose his vocation, follow it grimly, with one end in view.  Pearl must become his in the sight abandon his easy view about his future.  He must, indeed, plan his life.  He must choose his vocation, follow it grimly, with one end in view.  Pearl must become his in the sight of God and man—­especially man—­with the least delay.  He delighted Sam Pickering by continuing steadily at the linotype for five consecutive weeks, while business piled up at the First-Class Garage and old Porter Howgill was asked vainly to do everything.