a lady
at the Court of Clovis, and I was a heathen captive. I heard you sing a
Christian hymn--and asked for baptism." By a great effort he managed to
look as if he did not mean it.

But she did not seem over-pleased with his fancy, for, the surprise
fading from her face, "Oh, that was the way you remembered!" she said.

"Perhaps it was not that way alone. You won't despise me for being
mawkish to-night?" he asked. "I haven't had the chance for so long."

The night air wrapped them warmly, and the balm of the little breezes
that stirred the foliage around them was the smell of damask roses from
the garden. The creek tinkled over the pebbles at their feet, and a
drowsy bird, half-wakened by the moon, crooned languorously in the
sycamores. The girl looked out at the flashing water through downcast
lashes. "Is it because it is so transient that beauty is pathetic?" she
said; "because we can never come back to it in quite the same way? I am
a sentimental girl. If you are born so, it is never entirely teased
out of you, is it? Besides, to-night is all a dream. It isn't real, you
know. You couldn't be mawkish."

Her tone was gentle as a caress, and it made him tingle to his
finger-tips. "How do you know?" he asked in a low voice.

"I just know. Do you think I'm very 'bold and forward'?" she said,
dreamily.

"It was your song I wanted to be sentimental about. I am like one 'who
through long days of toil'--only that doesn't quite apply--'and nights
devoid of ease'--but I can't claim that one doesn't sleep well here; it
is Plattville's specialty--like one who

"'Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.'"

"Those blessed old lines!" she said. "Once a thing is music or poetry,
all the hand-organs and elocutionists in the world cannot ruin it, can
they? Yes; to live here, out of the world, giving up the world, doing
good and working for others, working for a community as you do----"

"I am not quite shameless," he interrupted, smilingly. "I was given a
life sentence for incompetency, and I've served five years of it, which
have been made much happier than my deserts."

"No," she persisted, "that is your way of talking of yourself; I know
you would always 'run yourself down,' if one paid any attention to it.
But to give up the world, to drop out of it without regret, to come
here and do what you have done, and to live the life that must be so
desperately dry and dull for a man of y