not you?'

'No.'

'I should think it would bring ill-luck, should not you?'

'No.'

'Should not you, really?'

'I do not think that it is worth arguing about,' replies Peggy, roused and wearied. 'I may dye mine, and you need not dye yours, and we shall neither of us be any the worse.'

'And yet——' he begins; but she interrupts him.

'After all,' she says, turning once more upon him those two dreadfully direct blue eyes—'after all, I am not at all sure that it is not a good emblem of marriage—the white gown that goes through muddy waters, and comes out black on the other side.'

There is such a weight of meaning and emphasis in her words that he is silent, and wishes that she had kept to her monosyllables.

CHAPTER IV