“Nonsense!  You can’t frighten me at all.”

“Oh, well,” he answered easily, “I shall go with you—­that is all.  I suppose you want to see me venture out in such raw, bleak weather as this—­with my weak lungs.”

“Your weak lungs?  How long since?”

“Well, I—­I’ve sometimes thought my lungs were not very strong.”

“Why, dear me, you poor thing; I suppose the climate at Kolyuchin Bay was a trifle too bracing—­”

“What does Campbell say?”

“—­and the diet too rich for your blood—­”

“What does Campbell say?”

“—­and perhaps you did overexert—­”

“Lloyd Searight, what does Mr. Campbell say in that—­”

“He asks me to marry him.”

“To mum—­mar—­marry him?  Well, damn his impudence!”

“Mr. Campbell is an eminently respectable and worthy gentleman.”

“Oh, well, I don’t care.  Go!  Go, marry Mr. Campbell.  Be happy.  I forgive you both.  Go, leave me to die alone.”

“Sir, I will go.  Forget that you ever knew an unhappy wom—­female, whose only fault was that she loved you.”

“Go! and sometimes think of me far away on the billow and drop a silent tear—­I say, how are you going to answer Campbell’s letter?”

“Just one word—­’Come.’”

“Lloyd, be serious.  This is no joke.”

“Joke!” she repeated hollowly.  “It is, indeed, a sorry joke.  Ah! had I but loved with a girlish love, it would have been better for me.”

Then suddenly she caught him about the neck with both her arms, and kissed him on the cheek and on the lips, a little quiver running through her to her finger-tips, her mood changing abruptly to a deep, sweet earnestness.

“Oh, Ward, Ward!” she cried, “all our unhappiness and all our sorrow and trials and anxiety and cruel suspense are over now, and now we really have each other and love each other, dear, and all the years to come are only going to bring happiness to us, and draw us closer and nearer to each other.”

“But here’s a point, Lloyd,” said Bennett after a few moments and when they had returned to coherent speech; “how about your work?  You talk about my career; what about yours?  We are to be married, but I know just how you have loved your work.  It will be a hard wrench for you if you give that up.  I am not sure that I should ask it of you.  This letter of Street’s, now.  I know just how eager you must be to take charge of such operations—­such important cases as he mentions.  It would be very selfish of me to ask you to give up your work.  It’s your life-work, your profession, your career.”

Lloyd took up Dr. Street’s letter, and, holding it delicately at arm’s length, tore it in two and let the pieces flutter to the floor.

“That, for my life-work,” said Lloyd Searight.

As she drew back from him an instant later Bennett all at once and very earnestly demanded: