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The woman was looking at him with incredulous, pitiful eyes like a dog’s. “I hate much goin’ on,” she whispered.

“Suppose,” said David, “you take those berries home and pack up your things. Got much?”

“All I’ve got will go in my bag.”

“Well, pack up; tell the madam where you live that you’re sorry, but you’re worn out –“

“God knows I am,” cried the woman, with sudden force, “worn out!”

“Well, you tell her that, and say you’ve got another chance, and –“

“What do you mean?” cried the woman, and she hung upon his words like a drowning thing.

“Mean? Why, what I mean is this. You pack your bag and come to the parson’s back there, that white house.”

“I know –“

“In the mean time I’ll see about getting a license, and –“

Suddenly the woman set her pail down and clutched him by both hands. “Say you are not married,” she demanded; “say it, swear it!”

“Yes, I do swear it,” said David. “You are the only woman I ever asked to marry me. I can support you. We sha’n’t be rolling in riches, but we can be comfortable, and — I rather guess I can make you happy.”

“You didn’t say what your name was,” said the woman.

“David Anderson.”

The woman looked at him with a strange expression, the expression of one who loves and re spects, even reveres, the isolation and secrecy of another soul. She understood, down to the depths of her being she understood. She had lived a hard life, she had her faults, but she was fine enough to comprehend and hold sacred another personality. She was very pale, but she smiled. Then she turned to go.

“How long will it take you?” asked David.

“About an hour.”

“All right. I will meet you in front of the parson’s house in an hour. We will go back by train. I have money enough.”

“I’d just as soon walk.” The woman spoke with the utmost humility of love and trust. She had not even asked where the man lived. All her life she had followed him with her soul, and it would go hard if her poor feet could not keep pace with her soul.

“No, it is too far; we will take the train. One goes at half past four.”

At half past four the couple, made man and wife, were on the train speeding toward the little home in the woods. The woman had frizzled her thin hair pathetically and ridiculously over her temples; on her left hand gleamed a white diamond. She had kept it hidden; she had almost starved rather than part with it. She gazed out of the window at the flying landscape, and her thin lips were curved in a charming smile. The man sat beside her, staring straight ahead as if at happy visions.

They lived together afterward in the little house in the woods, and were happy with a strange crystallized happiness at which they would have mocked in their youth, but which they now recognized as the essential of all happiness upon earth. And always the woman knew what she knew about her husband, and the man knew about his wife, and each recognized the other as old lover and sweetheart come together at last, but always each kept the knowledge from the other with an infinite tenderness of delicacy which was as a perfumed garment veiling the innermost sacredness of love.