"Coquet! Nor I with you. As it was when I found the historic gloves,
so it is now. I might have been and may be foolish; but I am no
trifler. I naturally cannot forget that little space in which I
flitted across the field of your vision in those days of the past, and
the recollection opens up all sorts of imaginings."

"Suppose my mother had not taken me away?" she murmured, her dreamy
eyes resting on the swaying tip of a distant tree.

"I should have seen you again."

"And then?"

"Then the fire would have burned higher and higher. What would have
immediately followed I know not; but sorrow and sickness of heart at
last."

"Why?"

"Well--that's the end of all love, according to Nature's law. I can
give no other reason."

"Oh, don't speak like that," she exclaimed. "Since we are only
picturing the possibilities of that time, don't, for pity's sake, spoil
the picture." Her voice sank almost to a whisper as she added, with an
incipient pout upon her full lips, "Let me think at least that if you
had really loved me at all seriously, you would have loved me for ever
and ever!"

"You are right--think it with all your heart," said he. "It is a
pleasant thought, and costs nothing."