"That's the bewitchment of it."

"The bewitchment?" puzzled Barton.

Nervously the girl crossed her hands in her lap. She suddenly didn't
look like a doughty little soldier any more, but just like a worried
little girl.

"Did you ever read any fairy stories?" she asked with apparent
irrelevance.

"Why, of course," said Barton. "Millions of them when I was a kid."

"I read one--once," said little Eve Edgarton. "It was about a person,
a sleeping person, a lady, I mean, who couldn't wake up until a prince
kissed her. Well, that was all right, of course," conceded little Eve
Edgarton, "because, of course, any prince would have been willing to
kiss the lady just as a mere matter of accommodation. But suppose,"
fretted little Eve Edgarton, "suppose the bewitchment also ran that no
prince would kiss the lady until she had waked up? Now there!" said
little Eve Edgarton, "is a situation that I should call completely
stalled."

"But what's all this got to do with you?" grinned Barton.

"Nothing at all to do with me!" said little Eve Edgarton. "It is me!
That's just exactly the way I'm fixed. I can't be attractive--out
loud--until some one likes me! But no one, of course, will ever like
me until I am already attractive--out loud! So that's why I wondered,"
she said, "if just as a mere matter of accommodation, you wouldn't be
willing to be friends with me now? So that for at least the fifty-two
hours that remain, I could be released--from my most unhappy
enchantment."

Astonishingly across that frank, perfectly outspoken little face, the
frightened eyelashes came flickering suddenly down. "Because,"
whispered little Eve Edgarton, "because--you see--I happen to like you
already."

"Oh, fine!" smiled Barton. "Fine! Fine! Fi--" Abruptly the word broke
in his throat. "What?" he cried. His hand--the steadiest hand among
all his chums--began to shake like an aspen. "WHAT?" he cried. His
heart, the steadiest heart among all his chums, began to pitch and
lurch in his breast. "Why, Eve! Eve!" he stammered. "You don't mean
you like me--like that?"

"Yes--I do," nodded the little white-capped head. There was much
shyness of flesh in the statement, but not a flicker of spiritual
self-consciousness or fear.

"But--Eve!" protested Barton. Already he felt the goose-flesh rising
on his arms. Once before a girl had told him that she--liked him. In
the middle of a silly summer flirtation it had been, and the scene had
been mawkish,