ay logically infer that the
collisions are upon the whole rather pleasurable than otherwise; and
when it comes to the last piece of fudge in the dish,--the very last
piece,--the astral observer will see that there is just the
slightest, the very slightest, quickest, most fleeting little tussle
of hands for it, and much laughter; and then the young woman rises
quickly--also note the slight pink flush in her cheeks, and she goes
to her chair and folds her pretty hands in her lap, and asks:--

"Well, do you like my fudge, Neal Ward? Is it as good as Belva
Lockwood's? She puts nuts in hers--I've eaten it; do you like it with
nuts in it?"

"Not so well as this," says the boy.

The girl slips into the dining room, for a glass of water. See the eyes
of the youth following her. It is dusky in the dining room, and the
youth longs for dusky places, but has not developed courage enough to
follow her. But he has courage enough to steady his eyes as she comes
back with the water, so that he can look into her blue eyes while you
would count as much as one--two--three--slowly--four--slowly--five. A
long, long time, so long indeed that she wishes he would look just a
second longer.

So at the end of the evening here stand Neal, and Jeanette, even as
Adam and Eve stood in the garden, talking of nothing in particular as
they slowly move toward the door. "Yes, I suppose so," she says, as
Eve said and as Eve's daughters have said through all the centuries,
looking intently at the floor. And then Neal, suddenly finding the
language of his line back to Adam, looks up to say, "Oh, yes, I
forgot--but have you read 'Monsieur Beaucaire'?" Now Adam said, "Have
you heard the new song that the morning stars are singing together?"
and Priam asked Helen if she would like to hear that new thing of
Solomon's just out, and so as the ages have rolled by, young gentlemen
standing beside their adored but not declared ones have mixed
literature with love, and have tied wisdom up in a package of candy or
wild honey, and have taken it to the trysting place since the
beginning of time. It is thus the poets thrive. And when she was asked
about the new song of the morning stars, Eve, though she knew it as
she knew her litany, answered no; and so did Eve's daughter, standing
in the dimly lighted hallway of the Barclay home in Sycamore Ridge;
and so then and there being, these two made their next meeting sure.

In those last years of the last century John Ba