The witchery and charm that had been done on him, he worked--if he were but to put his arm about her now, to draw her so that her head rested on his shoulder, with a certain pressure, he could feel all her being flower delicately to that beguilement.

He had promised himself, when he had her promise, that she should never miss anything, and he had a certain male satisfaction in being able to make good.

What he did now, in deference to their being as they were in the full light of day and the plying traffic, was to say: "Then if I were to put it to you in the light of my superior experience, that I considered it best for us to be married right away, I shouldn't expect you to contradict me." "Oh, Peter!" "We can't keep Mrs.Merrithew on forever, you know," he suggested, "and we've such a lot to do--there's Greece and Egypt and the Holy Land----" "But can we--be married in Venice, I mean ?" "That," said Peter, "is what I'm waiting your permission to find out." He spent the greater part of the afternoon at that business without, however, getting satisfaction.

"Marriage in Italy," the consul told him, "is a sort of world-without-end affair.

Even if you cable for the necessary papers it will be a matter of a month or six weeks before the ceremony could be accomplished.