For the next five or six years Blair was not often at home. At the end of his freshman year he was conditioned, and found a tutor and the seashore and his sketching—for he painted with some enthusiasm just at that time—much more attractive than his mother and Mercer. After that he went to Europe in the long vacations.

"How much vacation have I had since I began to run his business for him?" his mother said once in answer to Nannie's intercession that he might be allowed to travel. But she let him go. She did not know how to do anything else; she always let him do what he pleased, and have what he wanted; she gave him everything, and she exacted no equivalent, either in scholarship or conduct. It never occurred to her to make him appreciate his privileges by paying for them, and so, of course, she pauperized him.

"Blair likes Europe," she said one Sunday afternoon to David Richie, who had come in to see Nannie, "but as for me, I wouldn't take an hour of my good time, or spend a dollar of my good money, to see the best of their cathedrals and statues and things. Do you mean to say there is a cathedral in the world as handsome as my new foundry?"

"Well," David said modestly, "I haven't seen any cathedrals, you know,
Mrs. Maitland."

"It's small loss to you, David," she said kindly. "But I wish I'd thought to invite you to go along with Blair last summer. You might have liked it, though you are a pretty sensible fellow in most things." "Oh, I can't go to Europe till I can earn enough to pay my own way," David replied, and added with a quick look at Nannie, "besides, I like being in Mercer."

"Blair has no need to earn money," said Mrs. Maitland carelessly; then she blew out her lips in a bubbling sigh. "And he would rather see a cathedral than his mother."

The pathos of that pricked even the pleasant egotism of youth; David winced, and Nannie tried to murmur something of her brother's needing the rest.

Mrs. Maitland gave her grunt of amusement. "Rest! What's he ever done to tire him? Well! Clear out, clear out, you two,—if you're going to take a walk. I'm glad you came back for your vacation, David, at any rate. Nannie needs shaking up. She sticks at home here with me, and a girl ought to see people once in a while." She glanced at the two young creatures shrewdly. "Why not?" she reflected. She had never thought of it before, but "why not?" It would be a very sensible arrangement. The next moment she had decided that it should be! Nannie's money would be a help to the boy, and he needn't depend on his doctoring business. "I must put it through," she said to herself, just as she might have said that she should put through a piece of work in the office.

This match-making purpose made her invite David to supper very frequently, and every time he came she was apt, after he had taken his departure, to tramp into Nannie's parlor in the hope of being told that the "sensible arrangement" had been made. When she found them together, and caught a word or two about Elizabeth, she had no flash of insight. But, except to her, the situation as regarded David and Elizabeth was perfectly clear.

When, seven years before, the two boys had gone off together to college, Blair had confided to his friend that his faith in women was forever destroyed, "Though I shall love Elizabeth, always," he said.

"Maybe she'll come round?" David tried to comfort him.

"If she doesn't, I shall never love another woman," Blair said darkly.

David was silent. But as he and Blair were just then in the Damon and Pythias stage, and had sworn to each other that "no woman should ever come between them," he gave a hopeless shrug. "That dishes me," he said to himself; "so long as he will never love any other girl, I can't cut in."

It would have been rather a relief to Mrs. Richie to know that her son had reached this artless conclusion, for the last thing she desired was that David's calflove should harden into any real purpose. Elizabeth—sweet-hearted below the careless selfishness of a temper which it never occurred to her must be controlled—was a most kissable young creature to her elders, and Mrs. Richie was heartily fond of her; but all the same she did not want a daughter-in-law with a temper! Elizabeth, on her part, repelled by David's mother's unattainable perfections, never allowed the older woman to feel intimate with her. That first meeting so many years ago, when they had each recoiled from the other, seemed to have left a gulf between them, which had never quite closed up. So Mrs. Richie was just as well pleased that in the next few years David, for one reason or another, did not see his old neighbor very often. By the time he was twenty-four, and well along in his course at the medical school, she had almost forgotten her vague apprehensions. The pause in the intimacy of the mother and son—the inevitable pause that comes between the boy's seventeenth and twentieth years—had ended, and David and his mother were frank and confidential friends again; yet, though she did not know it, one door was still closed between them: "He's forgotten all about it," Mrs. Richie told herself comfortably; and never guessed that in silence he remembered. Of course David's boyish idea of honor was no longer subject to the claim of friendship, for Blair had entirely recovered from his first passion. The only thing he feared now was his own unworth. After all, what had a dumb fellow like himself to offer such a radiant being?

For indeed she was radiant. The girl he had known nearly all his life, impetuous, devoid of self-consciousness, giving her sweet, sexless love with both generous hands, had vanished with the old frank days of dropping an uninvited head on a boy's shoulder. Now, though she was still impetuous, still unconscious of self, she was glowing with womanhood, and ready to be loved. She was not beautiful, except in so far as she was young, for youth is always beautiful; she was tall, of a sweet and delicate thinness, and with the faint coloring of a blush-rose; her dimple was exquisite; her brows were straight and fine, shading eyes wonderfully star-like, but often stormy—eyes of clear, dark amber, which, now that David had come home, were full of dreams.

Before her joyous personality, no wonder poor inarticulate David was torn with apprehensions! He did not share them with his mother, who, with more or less misgiving, began to guess how things were for herself; he knew instinctively that Mrs. Richie's gentle, orderly mind could not possibly understand Elizabeth, still less appreciate the peculiar charm to his inherent reasonableness of her sweet, stormy, undisciplined temperament. Nannie Maitland could not understand either, and yet it was to Nannie—kind, literal little Nannie, who never understood anything abstract, that David revealed his heart. She was intensely sympathetic, and having long ago relinquished the sister-in-law dream, encouraged him to rave about Elizabeth to his heart's content; in fact, for at least a year before Mrs. Maitland had evolved that "sensible arrangement" for her stepdaughter, David, whenever he was at home, used to go to see Nannie simply to pour out his hopes or his dismays. It was mostly dismays, for it seemed to him that Elizabeth was as uncertain as the wind! "She does—she doesn't," he used to say to himself; and then he would question Nannie, who, having received certain confidences from the other side, would reassure him so warmly that he would take heart again.

At the time that he finally dared to put his fate to the touch, Mrs. Maitland's match-making intentions for Nannie had reached a point where she had made up her mind to put the matter through without any more delay. "I'll speak to Mrs. Richie about it, and get the thing settled," she said to herself; "no use dawdling along this way!" But just the day before she found time to speak to Mrs. Richie—it was in David's midwinter recess—something happened.

Elizabeth had accepted—not too eagerly, of course—an invitation to walk with him; and off they went, down Sandusky Street to the river and across the old covered bridge. They stopped to say how do you do to Mrs. Todd, who was peering out from behind the scarlet geraniums in the window of the "saloon." Elizabeth took the usual suggestive joke about a "pretty pair" with a little hauteur, but David beamed, and as he left the room he squeezed Mrs. Todd suddenly round her fat waist, which made her squeak but pleased her very much. "Made for each other!" she whispered wheezily; and David slipped a bill into her hand through sheer joy.

"Better have some ice-cream," the old lady wheedled; "such hot blood needs cooling."

"Oh, Mrs. Todd, she is so cool, I don't need ice-cream," the young fellow mourned in her motherly ear.

"Get out with ye! Ain't you got eyes? She's waitin' to eat you up,—and starvin' for ye!" And David hurried after Elizabeth, who had reached the toll-gate and was waiting, if not to eat him, at any rate for his company.

"She's a dear old soul!" he said joyfully.

"I believe you gave her a kiss," Elizabeth declared.

"I gave her a hug. She said things I liked!"

Elizabeth, guessing what the things might have been, swerved away from the subject, and murmured how pretty the country looked. There had been a snow-storm the night before, and the fields were glistening, unbroken sheets of white; the road David chose was followed by a brook, that ran chuckling between the agate strips of ice along its banks; here and there a dipping branch had been caught and was held in a tinkling crystal prison, and here and there the ice conquered the current, and the water could be heard gurgling and complaining under its snowy covering. David thought that all the world was beautiful,—now that Mrs. Todd had bidden him use his eyes!

"Remember when we used to sled down this hill, Elizabeth?"

She turned her cool, glowing face toward him and nodded. "Indeed I do!
And you used to haul my sled up to the top again."

"I don't think I have forgotten anything we did."

Instantly she veered away from personalities. "Isn't it a pity Blair dislikes Mercer so much? Nannie is dreadfully lonely without him."

"She has you; I don't see how she can be lonely."

"Oh, I don't count for anything compared to Blair." Her breath carried quickly. The starry light was in her eyes, but he did not see it. He was not daring to look at her.

"You count for everything to me," he said, in a constrained voice.

She was silent.

"Elizabeth…do you think you could—care? a little?"

She looked away from him without a word. David trembled; "It's all up—" he said to himself; and even as he said it, a small, cold hand was stretched out to him,—a hand that trembled:

"David, I am not good enough. Truly, I'm not."

The very shock of having his doubts and fears crumble so suddenly, made him stand stock-still; he turned very white. "What!" he said, in a low voice, "You—care? Oh no, you don't! You can't. I can't believe it."

Upon which Elizabeth was instantly joyous again. "Well, I won't, if you don't want me to," she said gaily, and walked on, leaving him standing, amazed, in the snow. Then she looked back at him over her shoulder. At that arch and lovely look he bounded to her, stammering something, he did not know what himself; but she laughed, glowing and scolding, swerving over to the other side of the path. "David! We are on a public road. Stop! Please!"

"To think of your caring," he said, almost in a whisper. His face, with its flash of ecstasy, was like wine to her; all her soul spoke fearlessly in her eyes: "Care? Why, David, I was only so awfully afraid you weren't going to ask me!"

His lip trembled. He was quite speechless. But Elizabeth was bubbling over with joy; then suddenly, her exhilaration flagged. "What will your mother say? She doesn't like me."

"Elizabeth! she loves you! How could she help it? How could anybody help it?"

"It's my temper," she said, sighing; "my wicked temper. Of course I never mean anything I say, and I can't imagine why people mind; but they do. Last week I made Cherry-pie cry. Of course she oughtn't to have been hurt;—she knows me. You see I am really a devil, David, to make dear, old Cherry-pie unhappy! But I don't believe I will ever lose my temper again as long as I live. I am going to be good, like your mother." The tears stood in her eyes. "Mrs. Richie is so simply perfect I am sort of afraid of her. I wish she had ever been wicked, like me. David, what shall we do if she won't consent?"

"She'll consent all right," he said, chuckling; and added with the sweet and trusting egotism of youth: "the only thing in the world Materna wants, you know, is my happiness. But do you suppose it would make any difference if she didn't consent? You are for me," he said with an abrupt solemnity that was almost harsh. "Nothing in the world can take you from me."

And she whispered, "Nothing."

Then David, like every lover who has ever loved, cast his challenge into the grinning face of Fate: "This is forever, Elizabeth."

"Forever, David."

On their way home, as they passed the toll-house, he left her and ran up the path to tap on the window; when Mrs. Todd beamed at him through the geraniums, "I've got her!" he cried. And the gay old voice called back, "Glory be!"

On the bridge in the gathering dusk they stood for some time without speaking, looking down at the river. Once or twice a passer-by glanced at the two figures leaning there on the hand-rail, and wondered at the foolishness of people who would stand in the cold and look at a river full of ice; but David and Elizabeth did not see the passing world. The hurrying water ran in a turbulent, foam-streaked flood; great sheets of ice, rocking and grinding against one another, made a continuous soft crash of sound. Sometimes one of them would strike the wooden casing of a pier, and then the whole bridge jarred and quivered, and the cake of ice, breaking and splintering, would heap itself on a long white spit that pushed up-stream through the rushing current. The river was yellow with mud torn up by a freshet back among the hills, but the last rays of the sun,—a disk of copper sinking into the brown haze behind the hills,—caught on the broken edges of the icy snow, and made a sudden white glitter almost from shore to shore.

"Elizabeth," David said, "I want to tell you something. I stood right here, and looked at a raft coming down the river, the evening that Blair told me that you and he—"

"Don't!" she said, shivering.

"I won't," he told her tenderly; "you were only a child; it didn't mean anything. Don't you suppose I understand? But I wanted you to know that it was then, nearly eight years ago, when I was just a boy, that I realized that I—" he paused.

She looked at him silently; her lip quivered and she nodded.

"And I have never changed since," he said. "I stood just here, leaning on this railing, and I was so wretched!" he laughed under his breath; "I didn't know what was the matter with me! I was only a cub, you know. But"—he spoke very softly—"all of a sudden I knew. Elizabeth, a woman on the raft looked up at me. There was a little baby. . . . Dear, it was then that I knew I loved you."

At those elemental words her heart came up into her throat. She could not speak, but suddenly she stooped and kissed the battered hand-rail where he said his hands had rested.

David, horrified, glancing right and left in the dusk and seeing no one, put a swift arm about her in which to whisper a single word. Then, very softly, he kissed her cheek. For a moment she seemed to ebb away from him; then, abruptly, like, the soft surge of a returning wave, she sank against his breast and her lips demanded his. . . .

That night David told his mother. He had been profoundly shaken by Elizabeth's lovely unexpected motion there in the twilight on the bridge; it was a motion so divinely unconscious of the outside world, that he was moved to the point of finding no words to say how moved he was. But she had felt him tremble from head to foot when her lips burned against his,—so she needed no words. His silence still lasted when, after an hour next door with her, he came home and sat down on the sofa beside his mother. He nuzzled his blond head against hers for a moment; then slipped an arm round her waist.

"It's all right, Materna," he said, with a sort of gasp.

"What is, dear?"

"Oh, mother, the idea of asking! The only thing in the world."

"You mean—you and Elizabeth?"

"Yes," he said.

She was silent for a moment; when she spoke her voice broke a little.
"When was it, dear?"

"This afternoon," he said. And once started, he overflowed: "I can't get my breath yet, though I've known it since a quarter past four!"

Mrs. Richie laughed, and then sighed. "David, of course I'm happy, if you are; but—I hope she's good enough for you, dear." She felt him stiffen against her shoulder.

"Good enough? for me! Materna, she is perfect! Don't you suppose I know? I've know her nearly all my life, and I can say she is perfect. She is as perfect as you are; she said you were perfect this afternoon. Yes; I never supposed I could say that any woman was as good, and lovely, and pure, as you—"

"David, please don't say such things."

David was not listening. "But I can say it of Elizabeth! Oh, what a lucky fellow I am! I always thought Blair would get her. He's such a mighty good fellow,—and so darned good-looking, confound him!" David ruminated affectionately. "And he can talk; he's not bottled up, like me. To think she would look at me, when she could have had him,—or anybody else! It seems kind of mean to cut Blair out, when he isn't here. He hasn't seen her, you know, for about two years."

"Perhaps you would like to call it off until he gets home, and give him a chance?"

David grinned. "No, thank you. Oh, Materna, she is, you know, really, so—so sort of wonderful! Some time I want to talk to you about her. I don't believe anybody quite understands Elizabeth but me. But to think of her caring for me! To think of my having two such women to care for me." He took her hand gently and kissed it. "Mother," he said—he spoke with almost painful effort; "Mother, I want to tell you something. I want to tell you, because, being what you are, you can't in the least understand what it means; but I do want you to know: I've never kissed any woman but you, Materna, until I kissed—Her."

"Oh," said Helena Richie, in a stifled voice, "don't, David, don't; I can't bear it! And if she doesn't make you happy—"

"Make me happy?" David said. He paused; that unasked kiss burned once more against his lips; he almost shivered at the pang of it. "Materna," he said hoarsely, "if she or I were to die to-night, I, at any rate, have had happiness enough in these few hours to have made it worth while to have lived."

"Love doesn't mean just happiness," she said.

David was silent for a moment; then he said, very gently, "You are thinking of—of your little boy, who died?"

"Yes; and of my marriage; it was not happy, David."

He pressed his cheek against hers, without speaking. The grief of an unhappy marriage he had long ago guessed, and in this moment of his own happiness the remembrance of it was intolerable to him. As for the other grief: "when I think of the baby," he said, softly, "I feel as if that little beggar gave me my mother. I feel as if I had his job; and if I am not a good son—" he stopped, and looked at her, smiling; but something in her face—perhaps the pitiful effort to smile back through the tears of an old, old sorrow, gave him a sudden, solemn thrill; the race pain stirred in him; he seemed to see his own child, dead, in Elizabeth's arms.

"Mother!" he said, thickly, and caught her in his arms. She felt his heart pounding heavily in his side, but she smiled. "Yes," she said, "my little boy gave me another son, though I didn't deserve him! No, no, I didn't," she insisted, laying her soft mother-hand over his protesting lips; "I used to wonder sometimes, David, why God trusted you to me, instead of to a—a better woman—" again she checked his outburst that God had never made a better woman! "Hush, dear, hush. But I didn't mean that love might mean sorrow. There are worse things in the world than sorrow," she ended, almost in a whisper.

"Yes, there are worse things," he said quietly; "of course I know that. But they are not possible things where Elizabeth is concerned. There is only one thing that can hurt us: Death."

"Oh, my dear, my dear! Life can hurt so much more than death! So much more."

But David had nothing more to say of life and love. He retreated abruptly to the matter of fact; he had gone to his limit, not only of expression, but of that modesty of soul which forbids exposure of the emotions, and is as exquisite in a young man as physical modesty is in a girl. He was unwilling, indeed he was unable, to show even to his mother, even, perhaps, to Elizabeth, the speechless depths that had been stirred that afternoon by the first kiss of passion, and stirred again that night by the sight of tears for a baby,—a baby dead for almost a quarter of a century! He got up, thrust his hands into his pockets, and whistled. "Heaven knows how long it will be before we can be married! How soon do you think I can count on getting patients enough to get married?"

Mrs. Richie laughed, though there was still a break of pain in her voice. "My dear boy, when you leave the medical school I mean to give you an allowance which,—"

"No, Maternal" he interrupted her; "I am going to stand on my own legs!" David's feeling about self-support gave him a satisfaction out of all proportion to the pain it sometimes gave his mother. She winced now, as if his words hurt her.

"David! All that I have is yours."

"No," he said again. "I couldn't accept anything. I believe if a man can't take care of his wife himself, he has no business to have a wife. It's bad enough for you to be supporting a big, hungry medical student; but I swear you sha'n't feed his wife, too. I can't be indebted, even to you!" he ended, with the laughing cock-sureness of high-minded youth.

"Indebted? Oh, David!" she said. For a moment his words wounded her; but when he had left her to go back to Elizabeth again, and she sat alone by her fireside, she forgot this surface wound in some deeper pain. David had said he had never kissed any woman but her, until he kissed Her. He had said that the things that were "worse than death" were not possible to Elizabeth. For a moment this soft mother felt a stab of something like jealousy; then her thought went back to that deeper pain. He had not supposed anybody could be as "perfect" as his mother. Helena Richie cowered, as if the sacred words were whips; she covered her face with her hands, and sat a long time without moving. Perhaps she was thinking of a certain old letter, locked away in her desk, and in her heart,—for she knew every word of it: "My child, your secret belongs to your Heavenly Father. It is never to be taken from His hands, except for one reason: to save some other child of His. Never for any smaller reason of peace of mind to yourself."

When she lifted her bowed head from her hands the fire was out. There were tears upon her face.