"No!" he said. "I'm very, very content, very proud and very happy, Kathleen."
"And the dream," she said, "the dream you told me of, Allan, the pretty girl who came——"
He laughed frankly, almost boyishly, a laugh so clear and so ringing that it, was infectious.
"Because I had a pleasant dream and dreamed a pretty girl was imprudent enough to come and kiss me, shall I moon about disconsolate and unhappy, my mind filled with stupid longing and foolish regrets, eh?"
"But the dream did affect you for a time, Allan?"
"For a time," he said, "it was so clear, so real, so strange, so—so undreamlike that it must affect me! Kathleen, I never think of it now, I've put it out of my mind, I've sat there a score of times on that very seat and no dreams have come, I've smiled at the foolish fancy of it, laughed it all to scorn—and forgotten it——"
"But if it were not—all a dream, if one day she came into your life—that girl——"
He shook his head. "She was a dream and she doesn't exist, she never will and never can—she came and she went—for good!"
"And yet," she persisted, with a woman's strange persistence, "Allan, if—if she came, if you saw her in life, if——"
"Then," he said quietly and looked her full in the eyes, "you have my promise, dear, just as I have yours, but it will never, never be—Kathleen, shall I be truthful, honest, candid with, you? I never want it to be, dear, I am well content! And now come——" he went on gaily, "and we'll talk to old Markabee, that young fellow who refuses to grow old! Come, dear and——"