“Admire whom?” she asked, a little coldly, for she knew.

“Mr. Ladew.”

“So do I,” she answered, looking straight ahead.  “That is one reason why I wanted you to come with me to-day.”

“It isn’t only that.  I want to tell you—­to tell you—­” He broke off for a second.  “You remember that night in my office before Fear came in?”

“Yes; I remember.”

“And that I—­that something I said troubled you because it—­it sounded as if I cared too much for you—­”

“No; not too much.”  She still looked straight ahead.  They were walking very slowly.  “You didn’t understand.  You’d been in my mind, you see, all those years, so much more than I in yours.  I hadn’t forgotten you.  But to you I was really a stranger—­”

“No, no!” he cried.

“Yes, I was,” she said, gently but very quickly.  “And I—­I didn’t want you to fall in love with me at first sight.  And yet—­perhaps I did!  But I hadn’t thought of things in that way.  I had just the same feeling for you that I always had—­ always!  I had never cared so much for any one else, and it seemed to me the most necessary thing in my life to come back to that old companionship—­ Don’t you remember—­it used to trouble you so when I would take your hand?  I think I loved your being a little rough with me.  And once, when I saw how you had been hurt, that day you ran away—­”

“Ariel!” he gasped, helplessly.

“Have you forgotten?”

He gathered himself together with all his will.  “I want to prove to you,” he said, resolutely, “that the dear kindness of you isn’t thrown away on me; I want you to know what I began to say:  that it’s all right with me; and I think Ladew—­” He stopped again.  “Ah!  I’ve seen how much he cares for you—­”

“Have you?”

“Ariel,” he said, “that isn’t fair to me, if you trust me.  You could not have helped seeing—­”

“But I have not seen it,” she interrupted, with great calmness.  After having said this, she finished truthfully:  “If he did, I would never let him tell me.  I like him too much.”

“You mean you’re not going to—­”

Suddenly she turned to him.  “No!” she said, with a depth of anger he had not heard in her voice since that long-ago winter day when she struck Eugene Bantry with her clenched fist.  She swept over him a blinding look of reproach.  “How could I?”

And there, upon the steps of the church, in the sudden, dazzling vision of her love, fell the burden of him who had made his sorrowful pilgrimage across Main Street bridge that morning.

A manifold rustling followed them as they went down the aisle, and the sibilance of many whisperings; but Joe was not conscious of that, as he took his place in Ariel’s pew beside her.  For him there was only the presence of divinity; the church was filled with it.

They rose to sing: 

   “Ancient of days, Who sittest, throned in glory,
      To Thee all knees are bent, all voices pray;
   Thy love has blest the wide world’s wondrous story
      With light and life since Eden’s dawning day.”