And they hurried away.
The Girl rose, walked a few yards, then stood gazing on the far horizon of departed time. Then she returned.
“That was my husband,” she said.
The Poet sprang to his feet as though released by a spring. His face was gray as the sky.
“God help us both!” he cried. “The woman was my wife.”
WITHHELD
By Ella B. Argo
Every time he had tried to propose to her they had been interrupted.
There was the moonlight night on the beach when a sudden storm sent them scurrying to shelter. Once it was in her mother’s drawing-room and callers were announced. He had almost reached the interrogation point while dancing when a colliding couple made them slip, and for weeks a broken ankle made her inaccessible. He might have put the momentous question in writing, but that did not appeal to his sense of fitness.
Lately she felt like Evangeline, since business always took him out of New York the day before she arrived, and twice illness called her home when he was to have met her at some resort. The Evangeline feeling was strong to-night, because he had inexplicably failed to keep his Miami appointment to accompany her mother and herself home, and at the last moment they had decided to come by sea.