“How can you ask?  Why should you doubt me?”

For a moment they stood silent, each looking into the heart of the other, each seeing the beginning of a new day.

“Child,” his voice trembled dangerously, “I—­I wonder if you care enough for me to—­to—­” but he could only look the question.

“To start all over again with you?” she whispered.

“Yes—­to trust yourself to the prodigal who has returned.  Without you, child, all the rest would be as the husks.  Peggy, I want you —­you!  You do love me—­I can see it in your eyes, I can feel it in your presence.”

“How long you have been in realizing it,” she said pensively as she stretched out her arms to him.  For many minutes he held her close, finding a beautiful peace in the world again.

“How long have you really cared?” he asked in a whisper.

“Always, Monty; all my life.”

“And I, too, child, all my life.  I know it now; I’ve known it for months.  Oh, what a fool I was to have wasted all this love of yours and all this love of mine.  But I’ll not be a profligate in love, Peggy.  I’ll not squander an atom of it, dear, not as long as I live.”

“And we will build a greater love, Monty, as we build the new life together.  We never can be poor while we have love as a treasure.”

“You won’t mind being poor with me?” he asked.

“I can’t be poor with you,” she said simply.

“And I might have let all this escape me,” he cried fervently.  “Listen, Peggy—­we will start together, you as my wife and my fortune.  You shall be all that is left to me of the past.  Will you marry me the day after to-morrow?  Don’t say no, dearest.  I want to begin on that day.  At seven in the morning, dear?  Don’t you see how good the start will be?”

And he pleaded so ardently and so earnestly that he won his point even though it grew out of a whim that she could not then understand.  She was not to learn until afterward his object in having the marriage take place on the morning of September 23d, two hours before the time set for the turning over of the Sedgwick millions.  If all went well they would be Brewster’s millions before twelve o’clock, and Peggy’s life of poverty would cover no more than three hours of time.  She believed him worth a lifetime of poverty.  So they would start the new life with but one possession—­love.

Peggy rebelled against his desire to spend the seventy dollars that still remained, but he was firm in his determination.  They would dine and drive together and see all of the old life that was left—­on seventy dollars.  Then on the next day they would start all over again.  There was one rude moment of dismay when it occurred to him that Peggy might be considered an “asset” if she became his wife before nine o’clock.  But he realized at once that it was only demanded of him that he be penniless and that he possess no object that had been acquired through the medium of Edwin Peter Brewster’s