"But--it's raining."
"All the better. It will be we two and the world away, Mary."
"And there isn't anything to say."
"Oh, yes, there is--oodles."
"And Aunt Isabelle will be worried."
He drew the rug up around her and settled back as placidly as if the
hands on the moon face of the clock on the post-office tower were not
pointing to midnight. "Aunt Isabelle has been told," he informed her,
"that you may be a bit late. I wrote it on the supper card, and she
read it--and smiled."
He waited in silence until they had left the avenue, and were on the
driveway back of the Treasury which leads toward the river.
"Porter, this is a wild thing to do."
"I'm in a wild mood--a mood that fits in with the rain and wind, Mary.
I'm in such a mood that if the times were different and the age more
romantic, I would pick you up and put you on my champing steed and
carry you off to my castle."
He laughed, and for the moment she was thrilled by his masterfulness.
"But, alas, my steed is a taxi--the age is prosaic--and you--I'm afraid
of you, Contrary Mary."
They were on the Speedway now, faintly illumined, showing a row of
waving willow trees, spectrally outlined against a background of gray
water.
"I'm afraid of you. I have always been. Even when you were only ten
and I was fifteen. I would shake in my shoes when you looked at me,
Mary; you were the only one then--you are the only one--now."
Her hand lay on the outside of the rug. He put his own over it.
"Ever since you said to-night that you didn't care--there's been
something singing--in my brain, and it has said, 'make her care, make
her care.' And I'm going to do it. I'm not going to trouble you or
worry you with it--and I'm going to take my chances with the rest. But
in the end I'm going to--win."
"There aren't any others."
"If there aren't there will be. You've kept yourself protected so far
by that little independent manner of yours, which scares men off. But
some day a man will come who won't be scared--and then it will be a
fight to the finish between him--and me."
"Oh, Porter, I don't want to think of marrying--not for ten million
years."
"And yet," he said prophetically, "if to-morrow you should meet some
man who could make you think he was the Only One, you'd marry him in
the face of all the world."