  A few minutes later, amid a hideous scene of riot, where young men were fleeing distractedly in every direction, where excited young girls were dragging them, struggling and screaming, into cabs, where even the police were rushing hither and thither in desperate search for a place to hide in, the Governor of New York and Professor Elizabeth Challis might have been seen whirling downtown in a taxicab toward the marriage license bureau. Her golden head lay close to his; his moustache rested against her delicately flushed cheek. A mo "Oh, those papers! The draft of the bill!" she exclaimed. "Where is it?" "Did you want it, Betty?" he asked, surprised. "Why—why, no. Didn't you want it, George?" "I? Not at all." "Then why on earth did you keep me imprisoned in that room so long if you didn't want those papers?" He said slowly: "Why didn't you give them up to me if you didn't really want them, Betty?" She shook her pretty head. "I don't know. . . . But I'm afraid it was only partly obstinacy." "It was only partly that with me," he said. They smiled. "I just wanted to detain you, I suppose," he admitted. "George, you wouldn't expect me to match that horrid confession—would you?" "No, I wouldn't ask it of you." He laid his cheek against hers and whispered: "George," she murmured, "I think it does. . . . Besides, I'm dreadfully near-sighted myself." "You!" "Dear, every one of us has got something the matter with her. Miss Vining, who caught the Mayor, wears a rat herself. . . . Do you mean to say that men believe there ever was a perfect woman?" He kissed her slowly. "I believe it," he said. |
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