"Oh, the distance makes it more improper, then," he said abstractedly;
but after a moment's contemplation of her half-averted face, he asked
gravely, "Has anyone talked to you about me?"

Ten minutes before, Nellie had been burning to unburthen herself of her
father's warning, but now she felt she would not. "I wish you wouldn't
call yourself Low," she said at last.

"But it's my name," he replied quietly.

"Nonsense! It's only a stupid translation of a stupid nickname. They
might as well call you 'Water' at once."

"But you said you liked it."

"Well, so I do. But don't you see--I--oh dear! you don't understand."

Low did not reply, but turned his head with resigned gravity towards the
deeper woods. Grasping the barrel of his rifle with his left hand, he
threw his right arm across his left wrist and leaned slightly upon it
with the habitual ease of a Western hunter--doubly picturesque in his
own lithe, youthful symmetry. Miss Nellie looked at him from under her
eyelids, and then half defiantly raised her head and her dark lashes.
Gradually an almost magical change came over her features; her eyes grew
larger and more and more yearning, until they seemed to draw and absorb
in their liquid depths the figure of the young man before her; her cold
face broke into an ecstasy of light and color; her humid lips parted
in a bright, welcoming smile, until, with an irresistible impulse, she
arose, and throwing back her head stretched towards him two hands full
of vague and trembling passion.

In another moment he had seized them, kissed them, and, as he drew her
closer to his embrace, felt them tighten around his neck. "But what name
do you wish to call me?" he asked, looking down into her eyes.

Miss Nellie murmured something confidentially to the third button of his
hunting shirt. "But that," he replied, with a smile, "THAT wouldn't be
any more practical, and you wouldn't want others to call me dar--" Her
fingers loosened around his neck, she drew her head back, and a singular
expression passed over her face, which to any calmer observer than
a lover would have seemed, however, to indicate more curiosity than
jealousy.

"Who else DOES call you so?" she added earnestly. "How many, for
instance?"

Low's reply was addressed not to her ear, but her lips. She did not
avoid it, but added, "And do you kiss them all like that?" Taking him by
the shoulders, she held him a little way from her, and gazed at him from
head to