A FEW minutes later, amid a hideous scene of riot, where young men were
fleeing distractedly in every direction, where excited young girls were
dragging them, struggling and screaming, into cabs, where even the police
were rushing hither and thither in desperate search for a place to hide
in, the Governor of New York and Professor Elizabeth Challis might have
been seen whirling downtown in a taxicab toward the marriage license
bureau.
Her golden head lay close to his; his moustache rested against her
delicately flushed cheek. A moment later she sat up straight in dire
consternation.
"Oh, those papers! The draft of the bill!" she exclaimed. "Where is it?"
"Did you want it, Betty?" he asked, surprised.
"Why--why, no. Didn't you want it, George?"
"I? Not at all."
"Then why on earth did you keep me imprisoned in that room so long if you
didn't want those papers?"
He said slowly: "Why didn't you give them up to me if _you_ didn't really
want them, Betty?"
She shook her pretty head. "I don't know. . . . But I'm afraid it was
only partly obstinacy."
"It was only partly that with me," he said.
They smiled.
"I just wanted to detain you, I suppose," he admitted.
"George, you wouldn't expect me to match that horrid confession--would
you?"
"No, I wouldn't ask it of you."
He laid his cheek against hers and whispered: "Darling, do you think our
great love justifies our concealing my myopia?"
"George," she murmured, "I think it does. . . . Besides, I'm dreadfully
near-sighted myself."
"You!"
"Dear, every one of us has got _something_ the matter with her. Miss
Vining, who caught the Mayor, wears a rat herself. . . . Do you mean to
say that men believe there ever was a perfect woman?"
He kissed her slowly. "_I_ believe it," he said.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]