“Yes, I love it,” said Marley. “But do you know, dear, that I never liked it before? It always seemed sad to me. But you have taught me to love many things. You don’t know all that you have done for me!”
She stood in her blue dress, with her hands folded before her. Marley looked at her hands, and at her white throat, and at her hair, its brown turned to a golden hue by the clear light; then he looked into her eyes. A sudden emotion, almost religious in its ecstasy, came over him. He bent forward.
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “Do you know how beautiful you are! I worship you!”
“Don’t, Glenn,” she said, “don’t say that!” The reflection of a superstitious fear lay in her eyes.
“Why?” he said defiantly. “It’s all true. You are my religion.”
“You frighten me,” she said.
Marley laughed.
“Why!” he exclaimed, “there’s nothing to fear. Isn’t our future assured now?”
CHAPTER XIX
WAKING
Carman was inducted into office the first Monday in December, quietly, as the Republican said, as though it reflected credit on the new county clerk as a man who modestly avoided the demonstration that might have been expected under such circumstances. Marley, in the hope of seeing his own name, eagerly ran his eyes down the few lines that were devoted to the occurrence, but his name was not there, the Republican’s reporter, as he felt, being a man who lacked a sense of the relative importance of events.