sible for a golden
moment as it entered the glow of its brief importance, only to be
blotted into invisibility as it passed.

"Is this a fair hide?" whispered Celia. "This is outside the grounds."

"It's the hotel barn," replied Bobby. "I bet he doesn't find us here."

They fell silent, because they were hiding, and in that silence they
unconsciously drew nearer to each other. The delicious aroma of the hay
overcame their spirits with a drowsiness. New sensations thronged on
Bobby's spirit, made receptive by the narcotic influences of the tepid
air, the mysterious dimness, the wands of gold, the floating brief
dust-motes. He wanted to touch Celia; and he found himself diffident. He
wanted to hear her voice; and he suddenly discovered in himself an
embarrassment in addressing her which was causeless and foolish. He
wanted to look at her; and he did so; but it was not frankly and
openly, as he had always looked at people before. His shy side-glances
delighted in the clear curve of her cheeks; the soft wheat-colour of her
curls; the dense black of her half-closed eyes; the brown of her
complexion; the sweet cleanliness of her. A faint warm fragrance
emanated from her. Bobby's heart leaped and stood still. All at once he
knew what was the matter. It is a mistake to imagine that children do
not recognize love when it comes to them. Love requires no announcement,
no definition, no description. Only in later years when the first fresh
purity of the heart has gone, we may perhaps require of him an
introduction.

At once Bobby felt swelling within his breast a great longing, a hunger
which filled his throat, a yearning that made him faint. For what? Who
can tell. The idea of possession was still years distant; the thought of
a caress had not yet come to him; the bare notion that Celia could care
for him had not as yet unfolded its dazzling wings; even the desire to
tell her was not yet born. Probably at no other period of a human
being's life is the passion of love so pure, so divorced from all
considerations of the material, or of self, so shiningly its ethereal
spiritual soul. Yet love it is; such love as the grown man feels for his
mate; with all the great inner breathless longings of the highest
passion.

The two lay curled side by side in their nests of hay. Time passed, but
they did not know of it. The little boy was drowned in the depths of
this new thing that had come to him. Celia filled the world to him. His
reve