“Before I met you, Selma, woman but was a name to me.  My life brought me little into contact with them, except my dear sister, and I had no temptation to regret that I could not support a wife.  Yet I dreamed of woman and of love and of a joy which might some day come to me if I could meet one who fulfilled my ideal of what a true woman should be.  So I dreamed until I met you.  The first time I saw you, Selma, I knew in my heart that you were a woman whom I could love.  Perhaps I should have recognized more clearly as time went on that you were more to me even then than I had a right to allow; yet I call heaven to witness that I did not, by word or sign, do a wrong to him who has done such a cruel wrong to you.”

“Never by word or sign,” echoed Selma solemnly.  The bare suggestion that Babcock had cause to complain of either of them seemed to her preposterous.  Yet she was saying to herself that it was easy to perceive that he had loved her from the first.

“And since I love you with all my soul must I—­should I in justice to myself—­to my own hopes of happiness, refrain from speaking merely because you have so recently been divorced?  I must speak—­I am speaking.  It is too soon, I dare say, for you to be willing to think of marriage again—­but I offer you the love and protection of a husband.  My means are small, but I am able now to support a wife in decent comfort.  Selma, give me some hope.  Tell me, that in time you may be willing to trust yourself to my love.  You wish to work—­to distinguish yourself.  Would I be a hindrance to that?  Indeed, you must know that I would do every thing in my power to promote your desire to be of service to the world.”

The time for her smile and her tears had come.  He had argued his case and her own, and it was clear to her mind that delay would be futile.  Since happiness was at hand, why not grasp it?  As for her work, he need not interfere with that.  And, after all, now that she had tried it, was she so sure that newspaper work—­hack work, such as she was pursuing, was what she wished?  As a wife, re-established in the security of a home, she could pick and choose her method of expression.  Perhaps, indeed, it would not be writing, except occasionally.  Was not New York a wide, fruitful field, for a reforming social influence?  She saw herself in her mind’s eye a leader of movements and of progress.  And that with a man she loved—­yes, adored even as he adored her.

So she turned to Littleton with her smile and in tears—­the image of bewitching but pathetic self-justification and surrender.  Her mind was made up; hence why procrastinate and coyly postpone the desirable, and the inevitable?  That was what she had the shrewdness to formulate in the ecstasy of her transport; and so eloquent was the mute revelation of her love that Littleton, diffident reverencer of the modesty of woman as he was, without a word from her clasped her to his breast, a victor in a breath.  As, regardless of the possible invasion of interlopers, he took her in his embrace, she felt with satisfaction once more the grasp of masculine arms.  She let her head fall on his shoulder in delighted contentment.  While he murmured in succession inarticulate terms of endearment, she revelled in the thrill of her nerves and approved her own sagacious and commendable behavior.