"Yes," she said slowly, "you—we understand each other and everything that has concerned each other, don't we, Jean?"
"Of course we do, Agnes. We have always—but there, now!" and he smothered the rest of it in a fond caress.
"Wasn't it strange," she mused after a time. "I could never understand it. I saw it in my eyes before we left Indiana. And then I had that strange dream and saw you." She paused and played with his fingers. "But I never felt the same afterwards. Somehow I felt that something strange, something unusual was going to happen in my life, and now when I look back upon it and am so happy," whereupon she grasped tightly the fingers she held—"I feel it just had to be."
"Do you reckon your father understood the love that was between us?"
"I think he did. And he started more than once about that time to tell me something. He went so far once as to say that if you liked me, and I cut him off. Afterwards I could see that it worried you and my heart went out to you more than ever. And then you reached your decision. I saw it, and it seems that I liked you more for the man you were."
"Did you love the man you were engaged to?"
"Jean!"
He laughed sheepishly, and patted her shoulder. He was sorry, that he had asked her such a question, and he resolved thereupon never to do so again. Something dark passed before him—terrible years when he had suffered much. She was speaking again.
"You know I never loved any one in the world but you."
THE END