When she went up the stair, Peggy caught a signal from her husband.  Aldous remained with them.  In two minutes he told the bewildered and finally delighted Peggy what was going to happen, and as Blackton hustled out for the minister’s house he followed Joanne.  She had fastened her door behind her.  He knocked.  Slowly she opened it.

“John——­”

“I have told them, dear,” he whispered happily.  “They understand.  And, Joanne, Paul Blackton will be back in ten minutes—­with the minister.  Are you glad?”

She had opened the door wide, and he was heading out his arms to her again.  For a moment she did not move, but stood there trembling a little, and deeper and sweeter grew the colour in her face, and tenderer the look in her eyes.

“I must brush my hair,” she answered, as though she could think of no other words.  “I—­I must dress.”

Laughing joyously, he went to her and gathered the soft masses of her hair in his hands, and piled it up in a glorious disarray about her face and head, holding it there, and still laughing into her eyes.

“Joanne, you are mine!”

“Unless I have been dreaming—­I am, John Aldous!”

“Forever and forever.”

“Yes, forever—­and ever.”

“And because I want the whole world to know, we are going to be married by a minister.”

She was silent.

“And as my wife to be,” he went on, his voice trembling with his happiness, “you must obey me!”

“I think that I shall, John.”

“Then you will not brush your hair, and you will not change your dress, and you will not wash the dust from your face and that sweet little beauty-spot from the tip of your nose,” he commanded, and now he drew her head close to him, so that he whispered, half in her hair:  “Joanne, my darling, I want you wholly as you came to me there, when we thought we were going to die.  It was there you promised to become my wife, and I want you as you were then—­when the minister comes.”

“John, I think I hear some one coming up the front steps!”

They listened.  The door opened.  They heard voices—­Blackton’s voice, Peggy’s voice, and another voice—­a man’s voice.

Blackton’s voice came up to them very distinctly.

“Mighty lucky, Peggy,” he said.  “Caught Mr. Wollaver just as he was passing the house.  Where’s——­”

“Sh-h-hh!” came Peggy Blackton’s sibilant whisper.

Joanne’s hands had crept to John’s face.

“I think,” she said, “that it is the minister, John.”

Her warm lips were near, and he kissed them.

“Come, Joanne.  We will go down.”

Hand in hand they went down the stair; and when the minister saw Joanne, covered in the tangle and glory of her hair; and when he saw John Aldous, with half-naked arms and blackened face; and when, with these things, he saw the wonderful joy shining in their eyes, he stood like one struck dumb at sight of a miracle descending out of the skies.  For never had Joanne looked more beautiful than in this hour, and never had man looked more like entering into paradise than John Aldous.