discussion.

"We can't solve it, Eugenio mio," she laughed. "We might as well go
home. Poor, dear mamma will be wondering where her Christina is. You
know I think she suspects that I'm falling in love with you. She doesn't
care how many men fall in love with me, but if I show the least sign of
a strong preference she begins to worry."

"Have there been many preferences?" he inquired.

"No, but don't ask. What difference does it make? Oh, Eugene, what
difference does it make? I love you now."

"I don't know what difference it makes," he replied, "only there is an
ache that goes with the thought of previous experience. I can't tell you
why it is. It just is."

She looked thoughtfully away.

"Anyhow, no man ever was to me before what you have been. Isn't that
enough? Doesn't that speak?"

"Yes, yes, sweet, it does. Oh, yes it does. Forgive me. I won't grieve
any more."

"Don't, please," she said, "you hurt me as much as you hurt yourself."

There were evenings when he sat on some one of the great verandas and
watched them trim and string the interspaces between the columns with
soft, glowing, Chinese lanterns, preparatory to the evening's dancing.
He loved to see the girls and men of the summer colony arrive, the
former treading the soft grass in filmy white gowns and white slippers,
the latter in white ducks and flannels, gaily chatting as they came.
Christina would come to these affairs with her mother and brother,
beautifully clad in white linen or lawns and laces, and he would be
beside himself with chagrin that he had not practised dancing to the
perfection of the art. He could dance now, but not like her brother or
scores of men he saw upon the waxen floor. It hurt him. At times he
would sit all alone after his splendid evenings with his love, dreaming
of the beauty of it all. The stars would be as a great wealth of diamond
seed flung from the lavish hand of an aimless sower. The hills would
loom dark and tall. There was peace and quiet everywhere.

"Why may not life be always like this?" he would ask, and then he would
answer himself out of his philosophy that it would become deadly after
awhile, as does all unchanging beauty. The call of the soul is for
motion, not peace. Peace after activity for a little while, then
activity again. So must it be. He understood that.

Just before he left for New York, Christina said to him:

"Now, when you see me again I will be Miss Channing of New York. You
will b