the girl had her own ideas upon the subject and smiled to herself at the
lively development of affairs since that tiresome garden party she had
found so unbearable. Here was an adventure after her own heart.

And yet Opal Ledoux had much on her mind just then. The Boy had read the
signs upon her face correctly. She was troubled.

For a long time they sat together, and looking far out over the vast
expanse of dancing blueness, they spoke of life--and the living of it.
And both knew so little of either!

It was a strange talk for the first one--so subtly intimate, with its
flashes of personality and freedom from conventions, that it seemed like
a meeting of old friends, rather than of strangers. Some intimacies are
like the oak, long and steady of growth; others spring to full maturity
in an hour's time. And these two had bridged the space of years in a few
moments of converse. They understood each other so well.

This same idea occurred to them simultaneously, as she looked up at him
with eyes glowing with a quick appreciation of some well-expressed and
worthy thought. Something within him stirred to sudden life--something
that no one else had ever reached.

He looked into her eyes and thought he had never looked into the eyes of
a woman before. She smiled--and he was sure it was the first time he had
ever seen a woman smile!

"I am wild to be at home again," she was saying, "fairly crazy for
America! How I love her big, broad, majestic acres--the splendid sweep
of her meadows--the massive grandeur of her mountain peaks--the glory of