of her
face.

"Yes--s," admitted Robert, somewhat hesitatingly. "She used to think
everything of me when I was a little shaver," he said.

"Doesn't she now?"

"Oh yes, I suppose she does, but it is different now. I am grown up.
A man doesn't need so much done for him when he is grown up."

Then again he looked at Ellen with eyes of pleading which would have
made of the older woman what he remembered her to have been in his
childhood, and hers answered again.

Robert did not say anything to her about the valedictory until just
before the close of the evening, when their last dance together was
over.

"I am sorry I did not have a chance to hear your valedictory," he
said. "I could not come early."

Ellen blushed and smiled, and made the conventional school-girl
response. "Oh, you didn't miss anything," said she.

"I am sure I did," said the young man, earnestly. Then he looked at
her and hesitated a little. "I wonder if you would be willing to
lend it to me?" he said, then. "I would be very careful of it, and
would return it immediately as soon as I had read it. I should be so
interested in reading it."

"Certainly, if you wish," said Ellen, "but I am afraid you won't
think it is good."

"Of course I shall. I have been hearing about it, how good it was,
and how you broke up the whole house."

Ellen blushed. "Oh, that was only because it was the valedictory.
They always clap a good deal for the valedictory."

"It was because it was you, you dear beauty," thought the young man,
gazing at her, and the impulse to take her in his arms and kiss that
blush seized upon him. "I know they applauded your valedictory
because it was worthy of it," said he, and Ellen's eyes fell before
his, and the blush crept down over her throat, and up to the soft
toss of hair on her temples. The two were standing, and the man
gazed at Ellen's pink arms and neck through the lace of her dress,
those incomparable curves of youthful bloom shared by a young girl
and a rose; he gazed at that noble, fair head bent not so much
before him as before the mystery of life, of which a perception had
come to her through his eyes, and he said to himself that there
never was such a girl, and he also wondered if he saw aright, he
being one who seldom entirely lost the grasp of his own leash.
Having the fancy and the heart of a young man, he was given like
others of his kind to looking at every new girl who attracted him in
the light of a problem,