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 they ate fried oysters and potatoes with a daring sense of freedom from conventionality and the restraint of parents. "This is better than Coulton," he said, smiling across the small table.

"Or teaching deportment in Saint Kitt's!" She exaggerated a shudder. "Ugh! What a life!"

The oysters were greasily cooked; the restaurant smelled of a rancid kitchen; the table-cloth was as soiled as the waiter's linen; but if they were sensible of these drawbacks, the fact was not apparent. He was too happy to see anything but her; and she, obviously, enjoyed his happiness. He kept his eyes on her like a courtier, finding her face even sweeter than when it had been more girlish, and dwelling in the unabashed friendliness of her smile without wishing it more demure. He enjoyed the almost domestic pleasure of sharing food with her; and when he recalled his old vision of her pouring coffee at the breakfast table, he blushed with a feeling of guilt in that anticipation, for it seemed a treachery to her new camaraderie.

To any spectator of their dinner, she would have appeared a merely pretty young woman, of a slight and Puritanic figure—with a suggestion of provinciality in her simple ruchings and her low heels—dining poorly, in a smelly restaurant, with a thin, a shabby, an amusingly adoring young man who might be an ill-paid clerk and who was certainly a stupid conversationalist. The romance of the situation was all in their own minds, as romance has a way of being. But he felt that he had won in his first bout with the world that was trying to separate her from him, and this