ly. "She called me a coward, a
rebel, and a traitor."

"Then she must have been in despair," replied the little lady in the
most matter-of-fact way. "When you are a little older you will discover
that despair has an anger all its own. But I hope you will never feel
it," she sighed. "Anyone can I see that you know very little about
women."

"I hope my ignorance does me no harm," I suggested.

"Not the slightest," she answered. "It is a help to you. It is the sort
that goes with youth, and I had rather have your youth than all the
experience in the world."

The answer I made I shall always regard as an inspiration. "You can
have my youth," I said, "if you will take all that goes with it." For
one or two little moments she either doubted her ears or failed to
catch my meaning. But when she could no longer doubt--when she was
obliged to understand me--she hid her face in her hands to conceal the
result of her emotions. I seized her hands and compelled her to look at
me. She was blushing like a school-girl. "Is my youth, with all its
appurtenances, worth your acceptance?" I asked. She made no reply, and
I think she would have maintained silence the rest of the way but for
my persistent chattering.

To me her embarrassment was very beautiful--thrilling, indeed--and in
some mysterious way her youth came back to her, and she seemed to be no
more than sixteen. "My youth is not too youthful for you," I insisted.
"I have grown very much older lately, and you have become a girl again
in the last five minutes." She was still silent, and I took advantage
of it to draw her hands under the lap-robe. "There is no reason why
your fingers should freeze," I said.

"They are not likely to--now," she declared, and, though it may have
been pure imagination, I thought she leaned a little nearer, and the
bare idea of such graciousness on her part seemed to change my whole
nature. All the folly of youth went out of me, and love came in and
took its place and filled my whole being. What I had been belonged to
the remote past; I knew that I should never be the same again.

"I offered you my youth," I said, "and now I offer you my manhood, such
as it is. You must answer yea or nay."

She gave me a quick, inquiring glance, and her face told me all that I
desired to know. "Neither yea nor nay," she replied. "We are both very
foolish, but, of the two, I am the more foolish. We are trying to look
too far ahead; we are prying into the future,