“She’s just a meddlesome old woman,” Dan began angrily.
“She’s truthful and she likes us both. Don’t let’s rush ahead and be married until we are sure, and until you try once more to see if you don’t love Lorraine; it seems so cruel when she cares so hard.”
“If she writes me any more silly notes about maple sugar socials on her everlasting pink paper and smelling of shampoo powders, I’ll stop speaking to her,” he declared. “Let’s settle it to-day, Thurley—announce our engagement in the Saturday Gazette. Everything I have or ever will have is yours. I love you; I’ll do what you say and be as you would have me. Darling, you’ve no one in this world to look out for you and I’ve no one to look out for. Let me take care of you! Please, I care so hard.” His dark, handsome face was very close to hers and, suddenly, he laid his head on her shoulder, smothering a sob.
Thurley’s sunrise, rose-red self went out to him in sympathy. “Does it mean so much?”
“Just—everything,” was the incoherent answer.
“Then—I will.” Tears came into her blue eyes. “I couldn’t make you wait any longer. Look at me.” She lifted his face between her hands and they looked into each other’s eyes for a long, wonderful instant. “Dan, it may be a mistake, but I think I do love you even if I’m not willing to be a house-and-garden wife and stop my singing.... I’d perish if I stopped singing, so promise me you’ll never ask it.”
“Not in church and parlors and like that,” he said unwillingly, “but my wife isn’t going to sing on the stage.”
Thurley’s brows drew together in perplexity. “Well, maybe no one will ever ask me,” she evaded. “We won’t quarrel about it until they do—only I’d fight you pretty hard if you tried to stop my singing—it means even more than you do!”
“It won’t after we are married,” he asserted jealously, “and I won’t wait long for you either. We’ll live at the hotel until the house is ready. I want to begin the plans to-morrow.”
“Oh, Dan, a year anyway! Whatever will Granny do?”