settle with me this minute the day, the nearest one possible, for our union to become a reality."
She slowly brought back her troubled eyes. "The day to marry you?"
"The day to marry me of course!" He gave a short, uneasy laugh. "What else?"
She waited again, and there was a fear deep in her face. "I must settle it this minute?"
Dennis stared. "Why, my dear child, when in the world if not now?"
"You can't give me a little more time?" she asked.
"More time?" His gathered stupefaction broke out. "More time—after giving you years?"
"Ah, but just at the last, here—this news, this rush is sudden."
"Sudden!" Dennis repeated. "Haven't you known I was coming, and haven't you known for what?"
She looked at him now with an effort of resolution in which he could see her white face harden; as if by a play of some inner mechanism something dreadful had taken place in it. Then she said with a painful quaver that no attempt to be
