t not be possible, oh, remotely inconceivably possible, of
course, that the unknown had equally marked some slight interest on her
part for him? The board fence, the maple-shaded walk, the soft brown
street of pulverized shingles, all faded in the rapt glory of this
vision. Bobby gasped. Literally it had not occurred to him before. Now
all at once he desired it, desired it not merely with every power of his
child nature, but with the full strength of the man's soul that waited
but the passing of years to spread wide its pinions. The need of her
answer to his love shook him to the depths, for it reached forward and
back in his world-experience, calling into vague, drowsy, fluttering
response things that would later awaken to full life, and reanimating
the dim and beautiful instincts that are an heritage of that time when
the soul is passing the lethe of earliest childhood and retains still a
wavering iridescence of the glory from which it has come. The question
rose to his lips ready for the asking. He wanted to turn track on the
instant, to call for Celia, to demand of her the response to his love.

And then, after the moment of exaltation, came the reaction. He was
afraid. The thought of his stubby uninteresting figure came to him; and
a deep sense of his unworthiness. What could she, accustomed to
brilliant creatures of the wonderful city, of whom Gerald was probably
but a mild sample, find in commonplace little Bobby Orde? He walked
meekly home; and took a scolding for being late.

Nevertheless the idea persisted and grew. It came to the point of
rehearsal. Before he fell asleep that very night, Bobby had ready cut
and dried a half-dozen different ways in which to ask the question, and
twice as many methods of leading up to it. In the darkness, and by
himself, he felt very bold and confident.

The next morning, however, even after he had succeeded in sequestrating
Celia from her companions, he found it impossible to approach the
subject. The bare thought of it threw him to the devourings of a panic
terror. This new necessity tore him with fresh but delicious pains. He
felt the need of finding out whether she cared for him as he had never
conceived a need could exist; yet he was totally unable to satisfy it.
By comparison the former misery of jealousy seemed nothing. Bobby lived
constantly in this high breathless state of delight in Celia; and
misery in the condition of his love for her. The Fuller boys and Angus
sa