emotion when he sang.

"You are always early," he said, with his slight, very slight, foreign
accent, "earlier than yesterday by half an hour," he added, looking at
his watch. My heart gave a great bound of pleasure. Then he had not
forgotten! How he must have seen all this.

He stood and talked with me for some moments, and then desperately I
made a movement to go on. I do not believe, at least I am not sure, that
at first he had any intention of going with me. But it was not in human
nature to withstand the flattery of such emotion as his presence seemed
always to inspire in me; and then, I have no doubt, he had a certain
pleasure in talking to me outside of that; and then the morning was so
lovely and he had so much of books.

He proposed to show me a walk I had not taken. There was a little
hesitation in his manner, but he was reassured by my look of pleasure,
and throwing down the oars under a tree, he turned and walked beside me.
No doubt he said to himself, "America! This paradise of girlhood;--there
can be no objection." It was heavenly sweet, that walk--the birds, the
sky, the dewiness and freshness of all nature and all life. It seemed
the unstained beginning of all things to me.

The woods were wet; we could not go through them, and so we went a
longer way, along the river and back by the road.

This time he did not do all the talking, but made me talk, and listened
carefully to all I said; and I was so happy, talking was not any effort.

At last he made some allusion to the music of last night; that he was so
glad to see that I loved music as I did. "But I don't particularly," I
said in confusion, with a great fear of being dishonest, "at least I
never thought I did before, and I am so ignorant. I don't want you to
think I know anything about it, for you would be disappointed." He was
silent, and, I felt sure, because he was already disappointed; in fear
of which I went on to say--

"I never heard any one sing like that before; I am very sorry that it
gave any one an impression that I had a knowledge of music, when I
hadn't. I don't care about it generally, except in church, and I can't
understand what made me feel so yesterday."

"Perhaps it is because you were in the mood for it," he said. "It is
often so, one time music gives us pleasure, another time it does not."

"That may be so; but your voice, in speaking, even, seems to me
different from any other. It is almost as good as music when you spe