agrant breeze laden with bird-song. A girl, standing aside, with
clasped hands drooping before her, her gaze upon a shadow on the floor
in the midst of that broad stream of light. Casting that shadow, under
the lintel, a young man clad for travel. Since he left his Southern
home, ruin has befallen it; he dares not ask one lapped in luxury to
share such broken fortunes as his seem to-day, even though such stout
shoulders, so valiant a heart, buffet them. If she loves, it is enough;
they can wait; their treasure neither moth nor rust can corrupt; their
jewel is imperishable. If she loves--He is looking in her eyes, holding
to her his hands. Slowly the girl meets his glance. A long look, one
long, silent look, infinitude in its assurance, its glow wrapping her,
blue and smiling as heaven itself, reaching him like the evening star
seen through tears,--a word, a touch, had profaned with a trait of
earthliness so remote, so spiritual a betrothal. He goes, and still the
upward-smiling girl sees the sunshine, hears the bird-song,--a boy
dashes by the door and down the path to meet the last, close-lingering
embrace of two waiting arms at the gate,--and then there is nothing but
Vivia bending and gazing at herself in the glass with a flushed and
fevered eagerness of rapture.

"The wild, sweet tunes that darkly deep
Thrill through thy veins and shroud thy sleep,
That swing thy blood with proud, glad sway,
And beat thy life's arterial play,--
Still wilt thou have this music sweep
Along thy brain its pulsing leap,--
Keep love away! keep love away!

"The joy of peace that wide and high
Like light floods through the soaring sky,
The day divine, the night akin,
Heaven in the heart, ah, wilt thou win,
The secret of the hoarded years,
Life rounded as the shining spheres,--
Let love come in! let love come in!"

she sang, to case her heart of its swelling gladness.

But here Vivia dared not concentrate her recollections, dared not dally
with such distant delight,--twisted and tossed her hair into its coils,
and once more opened the letter. Ray had not lived for three years under
converging influences, years which are glowing wax beneath the seal of
fresh impressions, years when one puts off or takes on the tendencies
of a lifetime,--Ray had not lived those three school-years without
contracting habits, whims, determinations of his own: let her have
Beltran's reasons to