ke a strong wine.

"Do you know you're different from what you uster be, Julie?" he said,
laying his arm about her shoulders, on the back of the bench, and
squaring about so that his handsome black eyes could devour her.

"Getting older, maybe," Julia smiled indifferently. "I'll be sixteen in
no time, now!"

"My mother was only fifteen when she was married," Mark said, in a deep
and shaken voice, yet with pride and laughter in his eyes. Julia flushed
and looked at the toe of her shoe.

"Well, what about it--eh?" Mark pursued in an eager undertone. Julia was
silent. "What about it?" he said again.

"Why--why, I don't know," Julia stammered, uncomfortably, with a nervous
and furtive glance about her; anywhere but at his face.

"Suppose I _do_ know?" he urged, tightening a little the arm that layabout
her. "Suppose I know for us both?"

Julia straightened herself suddenly, evading the encircling arm.

"Don't, Mark!" she pleaded, giving him a glimpse of wet blue eyes.

"I'm not teasing you, darling," he said tenderly. "I'm not going to
tease you! But you do love me, Julia?"

A silence, but she tightened the hold of the little glove that rested on
his free hand.

"Don't you, Julie?" he begged.

"Why--you know I do, Mark!" the girl said, and both began to laugh.

"But then what's the matter?" Mark asked, serious again.

"Well--" Julia looked all about her, and finally brought her troubled
eyes to rest on his.

"Well, what, you darling?"

"Well, it's just this, Mark. I don't know whether I can get it over to
you." The girl interrupted herself for a little puzzled laugh. "I don't
know that I can get it over to myself," she said. "But it's this: I feel
as if I didn't know _myself_ yet, d'ye see? I don't know what I want,
myself, and of course I don't know what I want my husband to be
like--d'ye see, Mark? I--I feel as if I didn't know _anything_--I don't
know what's good and what's just common. I haven't read books, I haven't
had any one to tell me things, and show me things!" She turned to him
eyes that he was amazed to see were brimming again. "My mother never
told me about things," she burst out incoherently, "about how to talk,
and taking baths--and not using cologne!"

Mark could not quite follow this argument, but he was quick with
soothing generalities.

"Aw, pshaw, Julie, as if you aren't about as good as they make 'em, just
as you are! Why, I'm crazy about you--I'm crazy about the way you look
and