But love, the god of gods, strung the invisible wires of mental telegraphy between our hearts, and over the mystic, unseen lines our thoughts, bright as hope, dark as sin, lighter than the thistle down, heavily charged with the electricity of doubt and trust, faith and fear, love and longing, flew noiselessly back and forth through the stillness and drew us unconsciously together; and so it happened that he stood upon the doorstep and pulled the bell.
There was always a triumphant peal to his ring that seemed to say to my heart, "Lo, the conquering hero comes." And now that vital organ bounded gladly in my breast, then stood still; my pulses throbbed with delight and triumph. Ten minutes before I would have thrown the world away, if it had been mine, for one smile from his lips, but now—I seized my pencil and wrote rapidly on the tablet on my knee as he entered the hall, came into the room, and stood beside me, then with a little start I looked up and exclaimed in feigned surprise:
"You here?"
"I think I am," he said, "but if you want me to, I'll look in the mirror to make sure." And then we both laughed, for 'tis so easy to laugh when one is happy and all the world is gay.
"Well," said he, sitting down beside me, clasping my hand in his as lovers sometimes do, and taking up the conversation where it had been dropped weeks and weeks before, "they say you can buy a good cooking stove for forty dollars—and I've had my salary raised ten dollars a month."
Then I smiled and he said abruptly:
"When are you going to marry me?"
"I haven't completed my study of the Bible yet, and I don't think I could be submissive, and——"
"Oh, fiddlesticks!" he exclaimed, impolitely interrupting me, "I don't want you to be submissive; I just want you to love me and—and—boss me," he added, in the very depth of repentance.
"But you demanded obedience," I insisted.