Page 373 (1/1)

"Then it's nothing personal? If there were no harrowing memories of Wilford, you could be happy withclose to her now, and i her hands, which she did not try to take away, but let the at the last Have you forgotten that?"

"I had, until Helen re of this thing brings Wilford's death back so vividly,head"

She was beginning to relent, Morris knew, and bending nearer to her, he said: "It was not yesterday It will be two years in February; and this, you know, is November I need you, Katy I want you soto do so I used each day to pray that God would give you to me, and now I feel just as sure that he has opened the way for you to come to me as I am sure that Wilford is in heaven He is happy there, and shall ahappy here? Tellher cold hands, and as he did so he felt her tears dropping on his hair

"If I say yes, Morris, you will not think that I never loved Wilford, for I did, oh yes, I did Not exactly as I supposed I ht, even then, have loved you, had you asked me first, but I loved him, and I was happy with hi swept the herself a true woood there was in Wilford, and Morris did not love her less for it She was all the dearer to hi his ar her head upon his shoulder, where it lay just as it had never lain before, for with the first kiss Morris gave her, calling her "My own little Katy," she felt stealing over her the same indescribable peace she had always felt with hi it would re Morris back when he asked her to, and thus sealing the compact of her second betrothal It was not exactly like the first There was no tumultuous emotions, or ecstatic joys, but Katy felt in her inmost heart that she was happier now than then, that between herself and Morris there was more affinity than there had been between herself and Wilford, and as she looked back over the road she had come, and remembered all Morris had been to her, she wondered at her blindness in not recognizing and responding to the love in which she had now found shelter