w. I have not been here
since I went to live in Eaton Square," she gave back to him. Oh! how
good and beautiful his asking eyes were! It was as he drew even a little
nearer that he saw for the first time the pricked lilac leaves lying on
the bench beside her.

"Did you do those?" he said suddenly quite low. "Did you?"

"Yes," as low and quite sweetly unashamed. "You taught me--when we
played together."

The quick emotion in his flushing face could scarcely be described.

"How lovely--how _lovely_ you are!" he exclaimed, almost under his
breath. "I--I don't know how to say what I feel--about your remembering.
You little--little thing!" This last because he somehow strangely saw
her five years old again.

It was a boy's unspoiled, first love making--the charming outburst of
young passion untrained by familiar use to phrases. It was like the
rising of a Spring freshet and had the same irresistible power.

"May I have them? Will you give them to me with your own little hand?"

The happy glow of her smiling, as she picked them up and laid them, one
by one, on his open extended palm, was as the glow of the smiling of
young Eve. The dimples playing round her mouth and the quiver of her
lashes, as she lifted them to laugh into his eyes, were an actual peril.

"Must I give you the pin too?" she said.

"Yes--everything," he answered in a sort of helpless joy. "I would carry
the wooden bench away with me if I could. But they would stop me at the
gate." They were obliged to treat something a little lightly because
everything seemed tensely tremulous.

"Here is the pin," she said, taking it from under the lapel of her coat.
"It is quite a long one." She looked at it a moment and then ended in a
whisper. "I must have known why I was coming here--because, you see, I
brought the pin." And her eyelashes lifted themselves and made their
circling shadows again.

"Then I must have the pin. And it will be a talisman. I shall have a
little flat case made for the leaves and the sacred pin shall hold it
together. When I go into battle it will keep me safe. Bullets and
bayonets will glance aside." He said it, as he laid the treasure away in
his purse, and he did not see her face as he spoke of bullets and
bayonets.

"I am a Highlander," he said next and for the moment he looked as if he
saw things far away. "In the Highlands we believe more than most people
do. Perhaps that's why I feel as if we two are not quite like other
peopl