The Bismarck Tribune

She interrupted him primly. "And your views don't interest me a bit."
"But they ought to!" he protested. "Everyone's interested in marriage. To marry happily one needs a single track mind-now I know what I'm talking about, Sybil. You'd better listen."
"I won't!" she snapped, and put her fingers in her ears.
"Oh, well."
Richard shrugged indifferently.
And, when she had taken her hands away, remarked casually. "You'd make a rotten wife yourself you know, darling."
"Why?" she demanded.
"You're not stupid enough," he told her cheerfully. "Gentle, fruitful women make the best wives."
"I'm gentle," she told him. "And I must be dreadfully stupid, or I wouldn't put up with you."
"Oh, no," he contradicted gently. "You're not stupid, Sybil. You are a very highly strung, sensitized bit of organism, utterly unsuited for anything so tranquil as matrimony. You ought to be clever enough to see that, my dear. If you must get married, cultivate placidity."
"Oh, please!" she besought. "I don't want to get married. Let's talk about something else."

Lazy days, and tropical nights. Cocktails and kisses. Love on a painted ocean. Moon and stars. And darkness all about.
They stood on the boat deck, deserted at midnight; and leaning over the rail, watched the phosphorescent water gleam like molten silver.
"It's magical!" Sybil cried. "It's the loveliest thing I ever saw. Every blessed wave has turned to silver! What made them, Richard?"
"The water," he informed her, "emits light without sensible heat."
"I told you!" she interrupted gaily. "Of course it's magic. There's no such thing as light without heat. The chemical properties-"
It's only make-believe. It's water sprites weaving tapestries for Neptune. Or maybe it's the ocean turned upside down, and that's its silver carpet.
"Anyhow it's enchanted. It's the loveliest night in the world. Oh, Rich, I feel bewitched! It's full of sorcery. Lovely, lovely night!"
"My dear," he answered, "you make me think of a beautiful poem. It must have been written for a girl like you on a night like this."
He repeated the lines softly.
"She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes;
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which Heaven to gaudy day denies."
When he had finished, there was that thick, heavy silence that closes about lovers everywhere, who stand beneath the moon. And, when he spoke again he whispered, as lovers always do at midnight.
"Only a few more hours!"
"If we could make life stand still!" she murmured. "It's been so wonderful."
"We're docking before noon," he replied. His voice was dull with misery.
"And I'll never, never see you again!" She tried to say it lightly.
(To Be Continued)
(Richard actually asks Sybil to marry him! And that is not the only surprising thing that happens in the next chapter.)