For a fleeting moment a picture arose before Mary’s eyes:  a tired woman bending over a wash-tub with a crying child tugging at her skirt.  “So much that’s beautiful—­and wonderful”—­the words were still echoing around her, and almost without thinking she said a peculiar thing.  “Suppose we were poor,” said she.

“But we aren’t poor,” smiled Wally.  “That’s one reason why I want to take you away from this.  What’s the use of having things if you can’t enjoy them?”

She thought that over.

“There is so much that I have always wanted to see,” he continued, “but I’ve had sense enough to wait until I found the right girl—­so we could go and see it together.  Switzerland—­and the Nile—­and Japan—­and the Riviera, with ‘its skies for ever blue.’  Any place we liked, we could stay till we were tired of it.  And a house in New York—­and an island in the St. Lawrence—­or down near Palm Beach.  There’s nothing we couldn’t do—­nothing we couldn’t have—­”

“But don’t you think—­” hesitated Mary and then stopped, timid of breaking the spell which was stealing over her.

“Don’t I think what, dear?”

“Oh, I don’t know—­but you see so many married people, who seem to have lost interest in each other—­nice people, too.  You see them at North East Harbor—­Boston—­everywhere—­and somehow they are bored at each other’s company.  Wouldn’t it be awful if—­if we were to be married—­and then got like that, too?”

“We never, never could!  Oh, we couldn’t!  You know as well as I do that we couldn’t!”

“They must have felt that way once,” she mused, her thoughts still upon the indifferent ones, “but I suppose if people were awfully careful to guard against it, they wouldn’t get that way—­”

She felt Wally’s arm along the back of the bench.

“Don’t be afraid of love, Mary,” he whispered.  “Don’t you know by now that it’s the one great thing in life?”

“I wonder....” breathed Mary.

“Oh, but it is.  You shouldn’t wonder.  It’s the sweetest story ever told—­the greatest adventure ever lived—­”

But still old dreams echoed in her memory, though growing fainter with every breath she drew.

“It’s all right for the man,” she murmured.  “If he gets tired of hearing the story, he’s got other thoughts to occupy his mind.  He’s got his work—­his career.  But what’s the woman going to do?”

Instinct told him how to answer her.

“I love you,” he whispered.

She looked at him.  Somewhere over them a robin began to sing as though its breast would burst.  The scent of the honeysuckle grew intoxicating.

“Your heart is beating faster,” he whispered again. “‘Tck-tck-tck’ it’s saying.  ‘There’s going to be a wedding next month’—­’Tck-tck-tck’ it’s saying.  ’Lieutenant Cabot is now about to kiss his future bride—­”

Mary’s head bent low and just as Wally was lifting it, his hand gently cupped beneath her chin, he caught sight of Helen running toward them.