Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/70

 "Why not?"

"Davey!" She clasped his wrist tight. "Can you—are you sure—can you?"

"What?"

"Marry me?"

"I'll show them!"

"Them? Who?"

"Father, I mean," he corrected; but he meant Paul, too, and all the apostles of Eternity. Of course he did not tell her; yet she suspected at least a part.

"But can you be happy, Davey? Oh, you know what I'm thinking of—your conscience, Davey, and ail the duties you make yourself do! Can we, Davey? Can we?"

"Listen! Will you marry me, definitely—we'll set the day right here and now—on the twenty-second of June? Is that all right with you?"

"The twenty-second of June will be all right with me, Davey."

"Just 'all right'?"

"Oh, my boy! my boy!"

He swung the car to the curb and again stopped.

After he once more grasped the wheel and gear-shift, he felt no relapse to guilt for his stirred sensation; he did not even try to down it; he gloried in it, thrusting his arm about Alice, gathering her against him and, when he drove into another drift, snatching at the wheel and struggling violently with the snow. So he brought her to her home.

Only after he had left her and was on the elevated train for Evanston did his new defiance of his father and of Paul, the apostle, and the company of saints