She had risen as she spoke, and stood beside him, slender, delicate, womanly, altogether charming. With no assumption of coquetry, she laid a detaining hand on his arm, and raised her brown eyes wistfully to his.
"I don't want you to go yet," she whispered. "You can stay till half-past eleven, Harry. Honestly, I'm not a bit tired to-night."
Palmer stooped and kissed her. "Mustn't try to tempt me, May," he answered, "after you've got doctor's orders to take things easy and have plenty of rest. If you'd only give up your beloved settlement work, then it would be a different thing altogether. You wait till we're married, and I'll make you give it up, whether or no. You'll find I'm enough to reform, without your having to bother your head with those bums from the slums. Gad, May, how's that? One of these regular eppy--what-you-may-call-'ems--Bums from the slums; really, now, I call that rather clever."
The girl shook with laughter. "Oh, Harry, Harry," she cried, "your sense of humor will certainly kill me some day. It's so very--well, obvious--to say the least. But--" and she drew closer to him--"I love you, dear, in spite of it."
Palmer slipped his arm around the girl's slender waist, and kissed her again and again. "You don't know, May," he whispered, "what it means to me to hear you say that. It makes me feel awfully proud, and yet at the same time, you know, it makes me feel awfully ashamed of myself, too. I never ought to have dared to ask you to marry me in the first place, May. That's the whole trouble. You're a million times too good for me. Sometimes, you know, I get to thinking lately I'm a deuced poor sort of a chap, after all."
The girl laid a protesting finger on his lips. "Stop!" she commanded; "I can find fault with you all I please, but I'm the only one. You're not to say a word against yourself, because I won't let you. I wouldn't want you to be any different, my dear, in any possible way--if only you wouldn't make fun of the settlement. That really makes me discouraged, Harry."
Palmer raised his right hand. "I solemnly swear," he cried, with mock seriousness, "that if it bothers you, May, I'll never make fun of it again. Only--and I'm really in earnest about this--I always have believed that there's trouble enough coming every one's way before they've finished the game to keep them busy, and yet here you deliberately go out hunting for it. That's what I can't get through my head."