h he could not at once find. She saw that his face was
very white and drawn in this ghost-like gloaming.

"I wish you wouldn't," she hesitated. "I like to talk to you tonight."

He turned and looked down at her, as she added:

"You're a curious make-up;--and have some really fine things in you!"

"That starts out well," he laughed, lighting the cigarette and sinking
back on the bench.

"Do you ever ask women's permission before smoking?" she asked, a shade
offended by the persistent way he ignored her in this regard.

"I didn't think it was quite necessary out doors;--and you might say
no!"

"Then you haven't the diplomacy of a true Kentucky gentleman. I'll tell
you what one of the most true and gallant of them once told me, and he
would be an example for you to follow--in more than one particular. He
was over ninety years old, and smoking a pipe--a dear old pipe he was
seldom without--when I came up to him. Holding it toward me, he said: 'I
shall not ask if I may smoke in your presence! A long time ago that
request once met with a denial, so thereafter I merely implored the
ladies' permission to burn a little incense to their lovely charms. Nor
do I recall,' he smiled, 'one single refusal in the seventy-five years
which have passed since then!' This," Jane added, her voice tender with
the memory, "was General Simon Bolivar Buckner."

"Well, you've cut a notch too high for me," he answered seriously.
"Those few 'fine things' you just accused me of are nothing more than
fireflies flashing in a skull compared to that grand old man. How d'you
like the simile, by the way? Pretty good, isn't it?"

"A striking picture of you, Brent! I would recognize it anywhere!"

A ripple of good humor played about her mouth which made her dangerously
attractive, and, oddly enough, this was caused by that look of
seriousness she had seen in him--a look which she had not the slightest
doubt portrayed some mental suffering. To anyone else she would have
held out her hand and said: "Let me help--I know I can!" But now she
could only feel somehow glad to find that he was big enough, and fine
enough to suffer. She had not suspected it, and it threw a new light
about him. It sent, too, a riot of something pleasant tingling through
her blood--as she had felt sometimes at the lookout point above her
father's cabin, where she watched for spies while he "mashed" the corn,
and the white moonshine dripped, dripped from the rusty worm of his