And I—­I just stood on the edge of the bluff by myself and let my soul lift up its wings of rejoicing that my Crag had got his beautiful desire for apostrophizing the Mother-Valley so all the world might hear.  And then suddenly it came over me in a great warm, uplifting, awe-inspiring rush that a woman who takes on herself voluntarily the responsibility of marrying a poet and an orator and a mystic, who is the complete edition of a Mossback that all those qualities imply, must square her shoulders for a long, steady, pioneer march through a strange country.

Could such achievement be for me?

“Please God!” I prayed right across into the sunset, “make me a full cup that never fails him!”

I don’t know how long I stood talking with God that way about my man, but when I turned and looked back under the maples everybody was gone, and I could hear the last rattle and whirl going down the hill.  For a second I felt that there was nobody but Him and me left on the hill, but even in that second my heart knew better.

“Now?” I questioned myself softly, out over to the yellow moon that had at last languidly and gracefully risen, putting the finishing touch to the scene I had been planning for my proposal.

“Evelina,” said the Crag quietly from where he stood leaning against the tallest maple, “shall we stay here forever and ever, or hurry down through the cemetery by the short cut to the station to say good-by to the railroaders as they expect us to do?”

Nobody ever had a better opening than that, and I ought to have said, “Be mine, be mine,” with some sort of personal variation of the theme, and have clapped him to my breast and been happy ever after.  That is what a courageous man would have done under the circumstances, with an opportunity like that, but I got the worst kind of scare I ever experienced, and answered: 

“How much time have we got?  Do you think we can make it?”

“Plenty,” he answered comfortably as I began to quicken my pace to the little gate that leads between the hedge into the little half-acre of those who rest.  Then as I tried to pass him, he caught my hand and made me walk in the narrow path close at his side.

[Illustration:  Scrounged so close to his arm that it was difficult for both of them to walk.]

Now even a very strong-minded woman, who had to go through a little graveyard with moonlight making the tombstones glower out from deep shadows of cedar trees, in the depths of which strange birds croak, while the wind rustles the dry leaves into piles as they fall, wouldn’t feel like honorably proposing to the man she intended to marry, even if she was scrouged so close to his arm that it was difficult for both of them to walk, would she?

I excuse myself this time, but I must hold myself to the same standard that I want to hold Lee Greenfield to.  How do I know that he hasn’t had all sorts of cold, creepy feeling’s keeping him from proposing to Caroline?