it was the
hardened state of disbelief in his own happiness which showed itself
when the first intoxication of passion was lived out.

"Why, of course you are," she readily rejoined. "Am I not sure of you?
You are as much mine as my eyes--or my hand."

"Oh, I am different!" he exclaimed. "A beggar doesn't prove faithless to
a princess--but what do you see in me, after all?"

She laughed. "I see a very moody lover."

They had reached a little deserted spring in the pasture called "Poplar
Spring," after the six great poplars which grew beside it. Eugenia
seated herself on a fallen log beside the tiny stream which trickled
over the smooth, round stones, bearing away, like miniature floats, the
yellow leaves that fell ceaselessly from the huge branches above.

"I don't believe you know how I love you," he said suddenly.

"Tell me," she insatiably demanded.

"If I could tell you I shouldn't love you as I do. There are some things
one can't talk about--but you are life itself--and you are all heaven
and all hell to me."

"I don't want to be hellish," she put in provokingly.

"But you are--when I think you may slip from me, after all."

The yellow leaves fluttered over them--over the fallen log and over the
bright green moss beside the little spring. As Eugenia turned towards
him, a single leaf fell from her hair to the ground.

"Oh! You are thinking of Dudley Webb!" she said, and laughed because
jealousy was her own darling sin.

"Yes, I am thinking--" he began, when she stopped him.

"Well, you needn't. You may just stop at once. I--love--you--Nick--Burr.
Say it after me."

He shook his head. Her hand lay on the log beside him, and his own
closed over it. As it did so, she contrasted its hardened palm with the
smooth surface of Dudley Webb's. The contrast touched her, and, with a
swift, warm gesture, she raised the clasped hands to her cheek.

"I told you once I liked your hand," she said. "Well--I love it."

He turned upon her a hungry glance.

"I would work it to the bone for you," he answered. "But--it is long to
wait."

"Yes, it is long to wait," she repeated, but her tone had not the
heaviness of his. Waiting in its wider sense means little to a
woman--and in a moment she cheerfully returned to a prophetic future.

A few days later Bernard came, and she saw Nicholas less often. Her
affection for her brother, belonging, as it did, to the dominant family
feeling which possessed her soul, was filled