The rest of this evening has paid me off for every sin I have ever committed or am ever going to commit. Tom took Pet home early and I hope they walked in the moonlight for hours. Tom is the kind of man that any pretty girl who is loving enough in the moonlight could comfort for anything. I'm not at all worried about him, but—
The hour I sat on my front steps and talked to Judge Wade must have brought gray hairs to my head if it was daylight and I could see them. Ruth Chester had said good-by with the loveliest haunted look in her great dark eyes and I had felt as if I had killed something that was alive and that I hadn't killed it enough. Doctor John had been called from his coffee to a patient and had gone with just a friendly word of good night, and the others had at last left the judge and me alone—also in the moonlight, which I wished in my heart somebody would put out.
They say among the lawyers that it is a good thing that Benton Wade is on the bench, for it is no use to try a case against him when he has the handling of a jury. He just looks them in the face and tells them how to vote. To-night he looked me in the face and told me how to marry, and I'm not sure yet that I won't do as he says. Of course I'm in love with Alfred, but if he wants me he had better get me away quick before the judge makes all his arrangements. A woman loves to be courted with poems and flowers and deference, but she's mighty apt to marry the man who says, "Don't argue, but put on your bonnet and come with me." The fact that it was too late to get into the clerk's office saved me to-night, but in two days—
Oh, I'm crying, crying in my heart, which is worse than in my eyes, as I sit and look across my garden, where the cold moon is hanging low over the tall trees behind the doctor's house and his light in his room is burning warm and bright. They are right; he doesn't care if I am going away for ever with Alfred. His quick toast to him and the lovely warm look he poured over poor frightened me at his side, as he drank his champagne, told me that once and for all. Still we have been so close together over his baby and I have grown so dependent on him for so many things that it cuts into me like a hot knife that he shouldn't care if he lost me—even for a neighbor. I shouldn't mind not having any husband if I could always live close by him and Billy like this, and if I married Judge Wade I could at least have him for a family physician. No—I don't like that! Of course I'm going with Alfred now that an accident has made me announce the fact to the whole town before he even knows it himself, but wherever I go that light in the room with that lonely man is going to burn in my heart. Hope it will throw a glow over Alfred!