Page:Magician 1908.djvu/18

14 admires you as much as you adore her. She is never tired of listening to my prosy stories of your childhood in Alexandria, and I’m quite sure that she will make you the most admirable of wives.”

“You can’t be more sure than I am,” laughed Arthur.

He looked upon himself as a happy man. He loved Margaret with all his heart, and he was confident in her great affection for him. It was impossible that anything should arise to disturb the pleasant life which they had planned together. His love cast a glamour upon his work, and his work, by contrast, made love the more entrancing.

“We’re going to fix the date of our marriage now,” he said. “I’m buying furniture already.”

“I think only English people could have behaved so oddly as you, in postponing your marriage without reason for two mortal years.”

“You see, Margaret was ten when I first saw her, and only seventeen when I asked her to marry me. She thought she had reason to be grateful to me and would have married me there and then. But I knew she hankered after these two years in Paris, and I didn’t feel it was fair to bind her to me till she had seen at least something of the world. And she seemed hardly ready for marriage; she was growing still.”

“Did I not say that you were a matter-of-fact young man?” smiled Dr. Porhoët.

“And it’s not as if there had been any doubt about our knowing our minds. We both cared, and we had a long time before us. We could afford to wait.”