So with the desire to preserve a record of these marvellous moments which were crowding into her life, she chose a perfectly new book to be devoted to Derry.  And on the first page she pasted, not the faded violet from the basket which had come to her yesterday—­oh, day of days!—­not the dance program on which Derry’s name was most magically scrawled, nor the spring of heather, nor a handful of rose leaves from the offering of the morning—­no, the very first thing that went into Jean’s memory book was a frayed silken tassel that had been cut from a rose-colored curtain!  She had carried down her little scissors the night before, and had snipped it, and here it was—­an omen for her own rose-colored future!

Starry-eyed she lay back among her pillows.

“Oh, Polly-Ann, Polly-Ann,” she said tensely, to the small cat on the cushions, “if I should ever wake up and find that it wasn’t true—­”

Polly-Ann stared at her with mystical green orbs.  She could offer no help, but she served as a peg upon which Jean could hang her eloquence.  She stretched herself luxuriously and purred.

“But it is true, Polly-Ann,” Jean said, “and I am going to church with him—­wasn’t it beautiful that he should think of going to church with me on Thanksgiving morning, Polly-Ann?”

She dressed herself presently, making a sort of sacred rite of it—­because of Derry.  She was glad that she was pretty—­because of Derry.  Glad that her gray fur coat was becoming—­glad of the red rose against it.

He came in his car, but they decided to walk.

“I always walk to church,” said Jean.

“There’s sleet falling,” said Derry.

“I don’t care,” said Jean.

“Nor I,” said Derry.

And so they started out together!

It was a dismal day, but they did not know it.  They knelt together in the old church.  They prayed together.  And when at last the benediction had been said and they stood together for a moment alone in the pew, Derry looked down at her and said, “Beloved,” and the morning stars sang—!

When they went out, the sleet was coming thick and fast, and Derry’s car was waiting.  And when they were safe inside, he turned to her and his voice exulted, “I haven’t even told you that I love you—­I haven’t asked you to marry me—­I haven’t done any of the conventional things—­it hasn’t needed words, and that’s the wonder of it.”

“Yes.”

“But you knew.”

“Yes.”

“From the first?”

“I think it was from the first—­”

“In the Toy Shop?”

“Yes.”

“And you thought I was poor—­and I thought you were just the girl in the shop?”

“Isn’t it wonderful?”

It was more wonderful than they knew.

“Do you know that my money has always been more important to some people than I have been?  I have thought they cared for me because of it.”