fty years to love me in," she laughed, calculating his
age. "Oh, Eugene, what a boy you are!--Wait a minute," she added after a
pause, drawing the horse to a stop under some trees. "Hold these," she
said, offering him the reins. He took them and she put her arms about
his neck. "Now, you silly," she exclaimed, "I love you, love you, love
you! There was never anyone quite like you. Will that help you?" she
smiled into his eyes.

"Yes," he answered, "but it isn't enough. Seventy years isn't enough.
Eternity isn't enough of life as it is now."

"As it is now," she echoed and then took the reins, for she felt what he
felt, the need of persistent youth and persistent beauty to keep it as
it should be, and these things would not stay.

CHAPTER XXIV

The days spent in the mountains were seventeen exactly, and during that
time with Christina, Eugene reached a curious exaltation of spirit
different from anything he had experienced before. In the first place he
had never known a girl like Christina, so beautiful, so perfect
physically, so incisive mentally, so full of a fine artistic perception.
She was so quick to perceive exactly what he meant. She was so
suggestive to him in her own thoughts and feelings. The mysteries of
life employed her mind quite as fully as they did his. She thought much
of the subtlety of the human body, of its mysterious emotions, of its
conscious and subconscious activities and relationships. The passions,
the desires, the necessities of life, were as a fine tapestry for her
mind to contemplate. She had no time to sit down and formulate her
thoughts; she did not want to write--but she worked out through her
emotions and through her singing the beautiful and pathetic things she
felt. And she could talk in a fine, poetic melancholy vein on occasion,
though there was so much courage and strength in her young blood that
she was not afraid of any phase of life or what nature might do with the
little substance which she called herself, when it should dissolve.
"Time and change happeneth to us all," she would quote to Eugene and he
would gravely nod his head.

The hotel where he stopped was more pretentious than any he had been
previously acquainted with. He had never had so much money in his life
before, nor had he ever felt called upon to spend it lavishly. The room
he took was--because of what Christina might think--one of the best. He
took Christina's suggestion and invited her, her mother an