“Of course!  And does it work up pretty well?”

“Fine!”

“How much have you done, John?”

“Oh, not much!”

“Oh, John, for heaven’s sake—­you will drive me insane!” she laughed joyously, laying her hand over his.  “Tell me about it.”  She laughed again when he drew some crumpled pages from his pocket.  But he was presently garrulous, sketching his plan to her, reading a passage here and there, firing her with his own interest and delight.  He had as little thought of boring her as she of being bored, they fled together from the noise and heat of the city, and trod the Dover sands, and rode triumphant into the old city of London at the King’s side.

“I’m not a judge—­I wish I was,” she said finally.  “But it seems to me extraordinary!”

He silently folded the sheets, and put them away.  Glancing at his face, she saw that its thoughtful look was almost stern.  Martie wondered if she had said something to offend him.

When he sat down beside her again, she again laid her hand on his.

“What is it, John?” she asked anxiously.

“Nothing!” he said, with a brief glance and smile.

“I’ve made you cross?”

“You!” His dark gaze was on the floor, his hands locked.  For a full minute there was silence in the room.  Then he looked up at her with a disturbing smile.  “I am human, Martie,” he said simply.

The note was so new in their relationship that Martie’s heart began to hammer with astonishment and with a curious thrilling pleasure.  There was nothing for her to say.  She could hardly believe that he knew what he implied, or that she construed the words aright.  He was so different from all other men, so strangely old in many ways, so boyish in others.  A little frightened, she smiled at him in silence.  But he did not raise his eyes to meet her look.

“I did not think that when I was thirty I would be a clerk in a furniture house, Martie!” he said sombrely, after awhile.

“You may not be!” she reminded him hearteningly.  And presently she added:  “I did not think that I would be a poor man’s wife on the upper East Side!”

He looked up then with a quick smile.

“Isn’t it the deuce?” he asked.

“Life is queer!” Martie said, shrugging.

“I was up in Connecticut last week,” John said, “and I’ll tell you what I saw there.  I went up to that neighbourhood to buy some old furniture for an order we were filling—­I was there only a few hours.  I found a little old white house, on a river bank, with big trees over it.  It was on a foundation of old stones, that had been painted white, and there was an orchard, with a stone wall.  The man wanted eighteen hundred dollars for it.”

“Is that all?” Martie asked, amazed.

“That’s all.  I sat there and talked to him for awhile.”

“Well?” said Martie, as he stopped.

“Well, nothing,” he answered, after a moment’s pause.  “Only I’ve been thinking about it ever since—­what it would be to live there, and write, and walk about that little farm!  Funny, isn’t it?  Eighteen hundred dollars—­not much, only I’ll never have it.  And you are another poor man’s wife—­only not mine!  Do you believe in God?”