," he said, "did you ever imagine something
wonderful that might happen--like the door's opening and a delegation
coming to elect you captain of the baseball team, or whatever is
a little girl's equivalent of that--and keep on imagining it and
imagining it, until it seemed as if it really were going to happen?
Well, I have been standing here saying to myself, Wouldn't it be
wonderful if Crystal should come in a little blue car and take me to
drive? And, by Heaven! you'll never believe me, but she actually did."

"Tell me everything you've done since I saw you," she answered.

"I haven't done anything but think about you. Oh yes, I have, too.
I've reappraised the universe. You see, you've just made me a present
of a brand-new world, and I've been pretty busy, I can tell you,
untying the string and unwrapping the paper, and bless me, Crystal, it
looks like a mighty fine present so far."

"Oh," she said, "I think you talk charmingly." She had started to say,
"you make love charmingly," but on second thoughts decided that the
overt statement had better come from him. "Dear me," she went on, "we
have so much to talk about. There's my job. Can't we talk a little
about that?"

They could and did. Their talk consisted largely in his telling her
how much richer a service she could render his paper through having
been unconsciously steeped in beauty than if she had been merely
intellectually instructed--than if, as she more simply put it, she
had known something. And as he talked, her mind began to expand in
the warm atmosphere of his praise and to give off its perfume like a
flower.

But the idea of her working with him day after day, helping the
development of the paper which had grown as dear as a child to him,
was so desirable that he did not dare to contemplate it unless it
promised realization.

"Oh," he broke out, "you won't really do it. Your family will object,
or something. Probably when I go away to-night, I shall never see you
again."

"You are still going away to-night?"

"I must."

She looked at him and slowly shook her head, as a mother shakes her
head at the foolish plans of a child.

"I thought I was going," he said, weakly.

"Why?"

He groaned, but did not answer.

She thought, "Oh, dear, I wish when men want to be comforted they
would not make a girl spend so much time and energy getting them to
say that they do want it." Aloud she said:

"You must tell me what's the matter."

"It's a long