Gast.”
“Yes, I am the old man,” laughed Ravant’s happy wife into her husband’s face.
“Yes,” he said, and then again, “yes—you are—the—old—man! The old man! You! Me!”
“We!” cooed his wife.
“All those things I said about him were about you! To you!”
“Yes! Wasn’t it funny?”
A long time they sat there, she looking up, he down—eye to eye. But she never ceased to smile.
He tried to go.
“Not while I am here!” she laughed, and, slipping down, held him by the knees.
“No, beloved, after this there shall be, indeed, no secrets between us. I was so unhappy and alone that night that I meant to kill myself. No one cared for me, and I had to have some one care for me or die! My hand must have slipped, or, perhaps, I grew afraid. But God himself directed that bullet! You were mine and you were passing—going away from me! If you had gone on, we would never have met. It was the only way to stop you and give you to me, me to you. I went to the hospital and paid to nurse you. They said you needed no nursing, only care and quiet. And when they knew how important it was to me, for I told them all, they broke their rules all to pieces, and let me do it. And, now, dear one, you must keep what I have given you, what the good God has! You shall keep it!” (as he tried to dislodge her) “and you shall keep me! For I will not go! There, I am a beggar!” She laughed gloriously. “But the happiest beggar on earth, and you have got to support your happy beggar wife forever hereafter. That is to be your punishment.”