"Oh, no, Mark, of course not!" Julia admitted. "But I don't want to marry any one—"
"Well, what do you want? Haven't I loved you since you were a little girl?"
"Yes, I know—of course you have! Only"—Julia gave him a desperate smile—"only I can't discuss such things here," she pleaded, "with that woman so near!"
"You're right!" Mark said, with military promptness, and as one who loves to receive his lady's orders. "We'll go out. Only—I wanted you to see it!"
And as they went out he must stop to show her the admirably deep drawers of the little sideboard and the ingenious arrangement by which the gas was electrically lighted.
They thanked the woman, and began the long ride back to the settlement house, for Julia never left Miss Toland long alone. In the Sacramento Street car they both had to stand, but Mark found seats without difficulty on the dummy of the Fillmore Street car, and laying his arm along the back of Julia's seat, swung about so that his face was very close to hers. A world of wistful tenderness filled his voice as he said again:
"Well, darling, what do you think of it?"
Poor Mark! Perhaps if he had asked her only a week earlier, his lady might have given him a kinder answer. But Julia was walking in a golden dream to-day, a dream peopled only by herself and one other, and she hardly noticed his emotion. She fixed her blue eyes vaguely on the black eyes so near, and smiled a little.
"Oh, answer me, Julia!" Mark said impatiently. And a second later he asked alertly: "Where'd you get the violets?"
"Oh—somebody," Julia temporized. Pink flooded her cheeks.