story, beginning at
Hagerstown, Maryland, and he went back to his earliest days in
Alexandria. They discussed the differences in parental control to which
they had been subject. He learned of her father's business, which was
that of oyster farming, and confessed on his part to being the son of a
sewing machine agent. They talked of small town influences, early
illusions, the different things they had tried to do. She had sung in
the local Methodist church, had once thought she would like to be a
milliner, had fallen in the hands of a teacher who tried to get her to
marry him and she had been on the verge of consenting. Something
happened--she went away for the summer, or something of that sort, and
changed her mind.

After an evening at the theatre with her, a late supper one night and a
third call, to spend a quiet evening in her room, he took her by the
hand. She was standing by the piano and he was looking at her cheeks,
her large inquiring eyes, her smooth rounded neck and chin.

"You like me," he said suddenly a propos of nothing save the mutual
attraction that was always running strong between them.

Without hesitation she nodded her head, though the bright blood mounted
to her neck and cheeks.

"You are so lovely to me," he went on, "that words are of no value. I
can paint you. Or you can sing me what you are, but mere words won't
show it. I have been in love before, but never with anyone like you."

"Are you in love?" she asked naively.

"What is this?" he asked and slipped his arms about her, drawing her
close.

She turned her head away, leaving her rosy cheek near his lips. He
kissed that, then her mouth and her neck. He held her chin and looked
into her eyes.

"Be careful," she said, "mamma may come in."

"Hang mamma!" he laughed.

"She'll hang you if she sees you. Mamma would never suspect me of
anything like this."

"That shows how little mamma knows of her Christina," he answered.

"She knows enough at that," she confessed gaily. "Oh, if we were only up
in the mountains now," she added.

"What mountains," he inquired curiously.

"The Blue Ridge. We have a bungalow up at Florizel. You must come up
when we go there next summer."

"Will mamma be there?" he asked.

"And papa," she laughed.

"And I suppose Cousin Annie."

"No, brother George will be."

"Nix for the bungalow," he replied, using a slang word that had become
immensely popular.

"Oh, but I know all the country round ther