"No, but I never thought these things made a great difference in our lives after all. I believe it is what we are, not what we have, that gives life meaning."

He looked at her intently.

"I must get ready now for our drive. The horse will be here in ten minutes. Enjoy the view on the porch until I am ready," and she bounded up the stairs to her

room.

In a few minutes she was by his side again dressed in spotless white as he had seen her first. She lifted the lines over the sleek horse, and he dashed swiftly down the drive.

Oh! the peace and bliss of that drive along the lonely river road by its cool green banks!

How he poured out to her his inmost thoughts-things he had not dared to whisper alone with himself and God! And then he wondered why he had thus laid bare his secret dreams to this girl he had known but twenty-four hours. Nonsense, down in his soul he knew he had known her forever. Before the world was made, ages and ages ago in eternity he had known her. He turned to her now drawn by a resistless force as a plant turns toward the sunlight for its life. How he could talk that day! All he had ever known of art and beauty, all he knew of the deep truths of life, were on his lips leaping forth in simple but impassioned words. For hours he lay at her feet where she sat on a rock, high up on the cliffs overlooking the river and poured out his heart like a child. And she listened with a dreamy look as though to the music of a master.

At last she sprang to her feet and looked at her watch. "Oh! Mama will be furious. It will be after sundown before we can get home. We must hurry."

"I'll make it all right with your Mama," he replied as though he were skilled in meeting such emergencies.

"Don't you speak to her. It'll be all I can do to manage her."

The twilight was gathering when they reached the house, and an angry anxious mother was waiting high up on the stoop.

Watch me smooth every wrinkle out of her brow now!" she whispered as she flew up the steps.

Before her mother could say a word, a white hand was on her mouth and pretty lips were whispering something in her ears she had never heard before. There was the sound of a kiss and he heard Sallie say, Not a word!"

66

And the mother greeted him with a smile and a curiously searching look. She chattted pleasantly until her daughter returned from her room, and then left her. Again it was nearly twelve o'clock before he reached the hotel.

The next morning Bob St. Clare broke in on him before he was out of bed.

66

'Look here, you sly dog, what are you doing slipping and sliding around here yet?"

66

Bob, you're the man I want to see.

know about the Worths."

"" The Worths? Which one?"

66

Tell me all you

There's only one so far as I can see."

"Well, you may find out there's two if you should happen to collide with the General."

66

66

Does he cut up at times?"

'He's all right till he turns on you, and then you want to find shelter.'

“Did you ever run up against him?"

He's hail-fellow-well-met
He will laugh and joke

No, I never got that far. with every youngster in town. about his daughter until he thinks she is in earnest about a fellow, and then he swoops down on him like a hawk. I'll bet a hundred dollars he's playing you now for all

you're worth against the latest favourite. But Miss Sallie-she's an angel!"

"Look here, Bob, you're not in love with her?"

"Well, I'm convalescing at present my boy. Every boy in the town has been there, but I don't believe she cares a snap for a man of us unless it's that big redheaded McLeod. I can't make his position out exactly." "Did she jolt you hard when you hit the ground?” "Easiest thing you ever saw. She has a supreme genius for painless cruelty. When the time comes she can pull your eye-tooth out in such a delicate friendly way you will have to swear she hasn't hurt you." "You still go?"

"Lord yes, we all do,—sort of a congress of the lost meet down there. They all hang on. She keeps the friendship of every poor devil she kills."

"You know you make the cold chills run down my back when you talk like that."

"Are you in love with her, Gaston?"

"To tell you the truth, I don't know."

"Then what in the thunder have you been doing out there two days and nights, if you haven't made love to her?"

66

Just basking in the sun."

"Well, you are a fool. Eleven hours the first day, and fifteen hours yesterday. Confound you, don't you know a dozen fellows in town are cursing you for all they can think of?"

66 What about?"

"Why for trying to hog the whole time, day and night. She won't let a mother's son of them come near till you're gone."

"Well, that's immense!" exclaimed Gaston slapping his friend on the back.

"Don't be too sure. She's just sizing you up. She's done the same thing a dozen times before."

"I don't believe it."

And he didn't go home until the end of the week when the last cent of his money was gone.

CHAPTER VII

DREAMS AND FEARS

E was on the train at last homeward bound. Gaz

HR

ing out of the window of the car he was trying

to find where he stood. He must be in love.

He faced the remarkable fact that he had spent a whole week in Independence at an expensive hotel, and squandered every cent of the small fee he had received for his address in what would be otherwise a perfectly senseless

manner.

Yet he felt rich. He was sure he had never spent money so wisely and economically in his life. Beyond the shadow of a doubt he was in love,-desperately and hopelessly committed to this one girl for life. He said it in his heart with a shout of triumph. Life was not a sterile desert of brute work. It was true. Love the magician of the ages, lived in this world of lost faiths and dead religions.

Now that he was leaving he felt a tingling impulse to leap off the train, cut across the fields and run back to her-and he laughed aloud, just as the train came to a sudden stop, and everybody looked at him and smiled. A drummer looked up from a novel he was reading and said,

"It is a fine day, partner, isn't it?"

"Never saw a finer," answered Gaston with another laugh.

He dwelt long and greedily on the consciousness of