ies, how they grow.'"

"With their long rubbery stems, up out of mud mostly," Thaine said
carelessly. "I pretty nearly grew fast along with them down there, till I
learned how to gather them a better way."

The woodland shadows were thrust through with shafts of white moonbeams,
giving a weird setting to the silent midnight hour. The odor of woods'
blossoms came with the moist, fresh breath of the May night. There was a
little song of waters gurgling down the spillway that was once only a dry
draw choked with wild plum bushes. The road wound picturesquely through
the grove to a bridged driveway that separated the lakelet into two parts.
A spread of silvery light lay on this driveway and Thaine checked his
horse in the midst of it while the two looked at the waters.

"It's all just silver or sable. There's no middle tone," Leigh said,
looking at the sparkling moonbeams reflected on the face of the lake and
the darkness of the shadowed surface beyond them.

"Isn't there pink, or creamy, or something softer in those lilies right by
the bank? I'm no artist, but that's how it looks to a clod-hopper," Thaine
declared.

"You are an artist, or you wouldn't catch that, where most anybody would
see only steely white and dead black. It is the only color in this black
and white woodsy place," Leigh insisted, looking up at Thaine's face in
the shadow and down at her own white dress.

"There's a bit of color in your cheeks," Thaine said, as he studied the
girl's fair countenance, all pink and white in the moonlight.

"Oh, not the pretty blooming roses like Jo Bennington has," Leigh said,
smiling frankly and folding her hands contentedly in her lap.

Thaine recalled the seat under the honeysuckle, and Jo Bennington's
pleading eyes, and bewitching beauty, and the touch of her hand on his
arm, and her willingness to be kissed. He was flattered by it all, for Jo
was the belle of the valley, and Thaine thought himself in love with her.
He knew that the other boys, especially Todd Stewart, Jr., envied him. And
yet in this quiet hour in the silent grove, with the waters shimmering
below them, the gentle dignity of the sweet-faced girl beside him, with
her purity and simplicity wrapping her about, as the morning mists wrapped
the far purple notches on the southwest horizon, gave to her presence
there an influence he could not understand.

Thaine had never kissed any girl except Jo, had never cared enough for any
other girl to think