The girl faced around in her surprise.
"You?"
"Most certainly! Why not?" His voice was not quite so unenthusiastic
now. "It's one of the few unmistakable opportunities I've ever had to
make two people permanently as happy as Miriam was to-night. I'd feel
guilty all my life if I didn't help all I could, knowing how happy I am
going to be, myself!"
Thus did he work around, quite without abruptness, to a renewal of that
discussion which she had thought to close, weeks before.
"Are you trying to infer that I am to be a part of that happiness?" she
asked none too promisingly.
"You ought to know. I said 'all my life.'"
And there, suddenly, Barbara laughed.
"I suppose now they'll marry and live happily ever after!" she
exclaimed with an attempt at airiness.
"Most certainly," asserted Steve, although her mirth puzzled him. "Why
is it funny to you?"
"It isn't, but--yes it is too, now that it's no longer a thing one need
worry about. That's always the trouble with emotions which are too
intense. They're either very sad to contemplate, or very, very absurd.
And they will persist in exchanging faces, to the confusion of the
on-lookers. Garry was so dangerously in love with Mary Graves, you
see!"
"He was in love with an idea," the man contradicted flatly. "He was in
love with just that. And it is not safe for any man to live alone with
an abstract conception of anything.
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