Part 17

"Think of the racket there would be in the papers about us! You would be ashamed. And I'm not worth it, really. 'Another peer weds actress. Romance of the stage. The third this season. Below we append other instances of brilliant marriages of stage beauties.' Think of it!"

"I fancy we could keep it out of the papers," he said. "We would be married in the country--in church."

"In church!" Her eyes grew misty. "You would--go to church with me? Oh, my dear, that would be more of my dream coming true, like the cedar trees and the cows!"

"It's going to come true," declared Chalfont.

She held him away from her.

"Don't tempt me. It's not the title. That's only--funny. Me, my lady! What tempts me is the thought of being with you in that place where my heart is."

"My home?"

She nodded, appeared to be considering.

"There is this," she said. "If I married you I would do my best to try and be a lady--not vulgar. I think, after a little, it would come easy.... You said we should be perfect friends; but suppose--suppose I couldn't help loving you?"

"I was asking myself if that would come about--hoping it. In my case it is an eventuality not very remote."

His very quietness impressed her. She knew he was not demonstrative, yet behind every word he spoke the intensity of his feelings was manifest to her. She had to fight hard to keep in check the ferment of emotion he had stirred in her. She picked up her hat from the chair where she had been sitting on it.

"It might have been more crushed," she said quaintly, but with a meaning that had a hint of tragedy averted in it. She went to a mirror and began arranging her tumbled hair. "I must go back to Lexie. I stole out while she was asleep. Perhaps I shall get there before she wakes up."

"I'll take you," he said. "Only--aren't you going to give me an answer first, Maggy?"

She made a last desperate and unsuccessful effort at calmness.

"Yes--but I'm not worth having," she sobbed and collapsed in a crumpled heap at his feet. "Don't stop me!" she gasped, waving him away. "Let me--_burst_!"

And Chalfont stood where he was, waiting while her pent-up feelings exhausted themselves in a flood of choking tears, until she should be ready for him. Presently her sobs ceased. She struggled to her knees; her hands were clasped; her face, with a faint presage of happiness upon it, was turned to the window where the dawn of a new morning glimmered. Her lips moved. She was murmuring something beneath her breath. "What are you saying, dear?" he asked gently. "I--I think I'm saying my prayers," she answered huskily.

There, on her knees, with her hair still hanging in disorder, the tears drying on her face, thanksgiving and humility in her heart, she repeated the words of her rhymed creed, with a reverence that surely gave it the consecration of a prayer.

"All's well with the world, my friend, And there isn't an ache that lasts; All troubles will have an end, And the rain and the bitter blasts. There is sleep when the evil is done, There's substance beneath the foam; And the bully old yellow sun will shine Till the cows come home!"

She held out her arms to Chalfont.

"Lift me up," she whispered.