“Dearest,” she whispered, “you are right.  We are right.  Since we love each other, why should we not say so?  I love you—­I love you.  The ugly hateful past shall not keep us apart longer.  You say you loved me from the first; so did I love you, though I did not know it then.  We were meant for each other—­God meant us—­did he not?  It is right, and we shall be so happy, Wilbur.”

“Yes, Selma.”  Words seemed to him an inadequate means for expressing his emotions.  He pressed his lips upon hers with the adoring respect of a worshipper touching his god, yet with the energy of a man.  She sighed and compared him in her thought with Babcock.  How gentle this new lover!  How refined and sensitive and appreciative!  How intelligent and gentlemanly!

“If I had my wish, darling,” he said, “we should be married to-night and I would carry you away from here forever.”

She remembered that Babcock had uttered the same wish on the occasion when he had offered himself.  To grant it then had been out of the question.  To do so now would be convenient—­a prompt and satisfactory blotting out of her past and present life—­a happy method of solving many minor problems of ways and means connected with waiting to be married.  Besides it would be romantic, and a delicious, fitting crowning of her present blissful mood.

He mistook her silence for womanly scruples, and he recounted with a little laugh the predicament in which he should find himself on his own account were they to be so precipitate.  “What would my sister think if she were to get a telegram—­’Married to-night.  Expect us to-morrow?’ She would think I had lost my senses.  So I have, darling; and you are the cause.  She knows about you.  I have talked to her about you.”

“But she thinks I am Mrs. Babcock.”

“Oh yes.  Ha! ha!  It would never do to state to whom I was married, unless I sent a telegram as long as my arm.  Dear Pauline!  She will be radiant.  It is all arranged that she is to stay where she is in the old quarters, and I am to take you to a new house.  We’ve decided on that, time and again, when we’ve chanced to talk of what might happen—­of ’the fair, the chaste and unexpressive she’—­my she.  Dearest, I wondered if I should ever find her.  Pauline has always said that she would never run the risk of spoiling everything by living with us.”

“It would be very nice—­and very simple,” responded Selma, slowly.  “You wouldn’t think any the worse of me, Wilbur, if I were to marry you to-night?”

“The worse of you?  It is what I would like of all things.  Whom does it concern but us?  Why should we wait in order to make a public spectacle of ourselves?”

“I shouldn’t wish that.  I should insist on being married very quietly.  Under all the circumstances there is really no reason—­it seems to me it would be easier if we were to be married as soon as possible.  It would avoid explanations and talk, wouldn’t it?  That is, if you are perfectly sure.”