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 “Tam.” He kissed the hem of her skirt, the point of her little shoe. “Odd,” he mused, “how love makes even the most foolish thing seem feasible, sensible. What appears to the outsider as the rhapsody of the lover is to him the tritest of commonplaces. I, too, could kiss the ground you walk on, Andromeda, hackneyed as the phrase is, absurd as it sounds.” Without more ado he lifted her foot and kissed the grass beneath it. Then he looked up at her with a wonderful yearning in his eyes. “It is done! Behold, I have kissed the ground beneath your feet, and I do not seem to have done an absurd thing, or lost one scrap of dignity. This is love, without a doubt, the love that obliterates and rebuilds, and seems to sanctify the meanest act.”

Her eyes were shining into his, but with it all there was a wistfulness of look which had in it much of wonder and of pain.

“TI wish I had met you first,” she whispered. “What a waste of happy years. And there are so few of them.”

At last the landlady came with the tea.

“T’m sorry,” she said; “I’m afraid I have kept you waiting.”