"But we aren't poor," smiled Wally. "That's one reason why I want to take you away from this. What's the use of having things if you can't enjoy them?"
She thought that over.
"There is so much that I have always wanted to see," he continued, "but I've had sense enough to wait until I found the right girl—so we could go and see it together. Switzerland—and the Nile—and Japan—and the Riviera, with 'its skies for ever blue.' Any place we liked, we could stay till we were tired of it. And a house in New York—and an island in the St. Lawrence—or down near Palm Beach. There's nothing we couldn't do—nothing we couldn't have—"
"But don't you think—" hesitated Mary and then stopped, timid of breaking the spell which was stealing over her.
"Don't I think what, dear?"
"Oh, I don't know—but you see so many married people, who seem to have lost interest in each other—nice people, too. You see them at North East Harbor—Boston—everywhere—and somehow they are bored at each other's company. Wouldn't it be awful if—if we were to be married—and then got like that, too?"
"We never, never could! Oh, we couldn't! You know as well as I do that we couldn't!"
"They must have felt that way once," she mused, her thoughts still upon the indifferent ones, "but I suppose if people were awfully careful to guard against it, they wouldn't get that way—"
She felt Wally's arm along the back of the bench.
"Don't be afraid of love, Mary," he whispered. "Don't you know by now that it's the one great thing in life?"