He drew her to him once more, and suddenly, in the ardour of that embrace, he felt her tenseness suddenly relax—­as though, against her will—­and her passion, as she gave her lips, vied with his own.  Her lithe body trembled convulsively, her cheeks were wet as she clung to him and hid her face in his shoulder.  His sensations in the presence of this thing he had summoned up in her were incomprehensible, surpassing any he had ever known.  It was no longer a woman he held in his arms, the woman he craved, but something greater, more fearful, the mystery of sorrow and suffering, of creation and life—­of the universe itself.

“Janet—­aren’t you happy?” he said again.

She released herself and smiled at him wistfully through her tears.

“I don’t know.  What I feel doesn’t seem like happiness.  I can’t believe in it, somehow.”

“You must believe in it,” he said.

“I can’t,—­perhaps I may, later.  You’d better go now,” she begged.  “You’ll miss your train.”

He glanced at the office clock.  “Confound it, I have to.  Listen!  I’ll be back this evening, and I’ll get that little car of mine—­”

“No, not to-night—­I don’t want to go—­to-night.”

“Why not?”

“Not to-night,” she repeated.

“Well then, to-morrow.  To-morrow’s Sunday.  Do you know where the Boat Club is on the River Boulevard?  I’ll be there, to-morrow morning at ten.  I’d come for you, to your house,” he added quickly, “but we don’t want any one to know, yet—­do we?”

She shook her head.

“We must keep it secret for a while,” he said.  “Wear your new dress—­the blue one.  Good-bye—­sweetheart.”

He kissed her again and hurried out of the office....  Boarding the train just as it was about to start, he settled himself in the back seat of the smoker, lit a cigar, inhaling deep breaths of the smoke and scarcely noticing an acquaintance who greeted him from the aisle.  Well, he had done it!  He was amazed.  He had not intended to propose marriage, and when he tried to review the circumstances that had led to this he became confused.  But when he asked himself whether indeed he were willing to pay such a price, to face the revolution marriage—­and this marriage in particular—­would mean in his life, the tumult in his blood beat down his incipient anxieties.  Besides, he possessed the kind of mind able to throw off the consideration of possible consequences, and by the time the train had slowed down in the darkness of the North Station in Boston all traces of worry had disappeared.  The future would take care of itself.