BEFORE boarding the train he was to take for Raleigh, he lingered with Mrs. Durham talking, talking, talking about the wonder of his love. As he arose to leave he said, “Now, Mother dear”——

“Charlie, you just say that so beautifully to make me your slave.”

“Of course I do. What I was going to say is, I can’t write to her. I don’t dare. You can. Tell her all about me won’t you? Everything that you think will interest and please her, and that will be discreet. Your intuitions will tell you how far to go. Tell her how hard I’m working and what an important mission I’ve undertaken, and the tremendous things that hang on its outcome. And tell her how impatiently I’m waiting for her to come to the Springs. Be sure to tell her that.”

“All right. I ’ll act as your attorney in your absence. But hurry back, she must not get here first. I want you to be on the spot.”

“I ’ll be here if I have to give up politics and go into business—and you know how I hate that word ‘business.’”

“I ’ll telegraph you if she comes.”

“Don’t let her come till I get back. Tell her the hotel isn’t fit to receive guests yet—it never is for that matter—but anything to give me time to get here.”

He worked with indomitable courage for two weeks, visiting the principal towns in the state, and everywhere arousing intense enthusiasm. There was something contagious in his spirit. The young fellows were charmed by his eager intense way of looking at things, they caught the infection and he made hundreds of staunch friends.

“You’re just in time!” cried his mother greeting him with radiant face on his return. “She is coming tomorrow. I’ve a beautiful letter from her. I think one of the sweetest letters a girl ever wrote.”

“Let me see it!”

“No.”

“Why, Mother, I thought you were all on my side!”

“But I’m not. I’m a woman, and you can’t see some things she says.”

“Then it’s something awfully nice about me.”

“Maybe the opposite.”

“Then you’d resent it for me.”

“I love her too, sir.”

“Let me see the tip end of it where she signs her name!”

“You can see that much, there”——

“Doesn’t she write a lovely hand!” He looked long and lovingly. “That pretty name!—Sallie! So old-fashioned, and so homelike. It’s music, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t know you could be so silly, Charlie.”

“It is funny, isn’t it? You know I think after all, we are made out of the same stuff, saint and sinner, philosopher and fool. The differences are only skin deep.”

“You don’t think she is made out of ordinary clay?”

“Oh! Lord, no, I meant the men. Every woman is something divine to me. I think of God as a woman, not a man—a great loving Mother of all Life. If I ever saw the face of God it was in my mother’s face.”

“Hush! you will make me do anything you wish.”

“No, no, I don’t want to see that letter unless you think it best.”

“Well, you will not see any more of it, sir.”

When Gaston met them at the depot with a carriage to take Sallie, her mother, and Helen Lowell, her Boston schoolmate, to the Springs, the first passenger to alight was Bob St. Clare.

“What in the thunder are you doing here! This town is quarantined against you!” said Gaston.

“Hush!” said Bob in a stage whisper. “She’s here. There’s her valise.”

“That’s why you can’t land. Two’s company, three’s a crowd. I like you, Bob. But I won’t stand for this.”

The crowd were pouring off the train and had cut off Sallie’s party in the centre of the car.

“Gaston, I just came up for your sake. I’m looking after Miss Lowell. I’m lost, ruined. Scared to say a word. I thought maybe, you’d help me out. We ’ll pool chances. I ’ll talk for you and you talk for me.”

“It’s a bargain, St. Clare.”

“I want a separate carriage,—get me one quick.”

In a few moments, the brief introduction over, Gaston was seated in the carriage facing Sallie and her mother whirling along the road, over the long hills toward the Campbell Sulphur Springs in the woods, two miles from the town.

How beautiful and fresh she looked to him even in a dusty travelling dress! He was drinking the nectar from the depths of her eyes.

“Now don’t you think Helen the prettiest girl you ever saw, Mr. Gaston?” she asked.

“I hadn’t noticed it.”

“Where were your eyes?”

“Elsewhere. I’m so glad you are going to spend a month at the Springs, Miss Sallie. I used to go to school there when a little boy. They had a girl’s school there in the winter and boys under twelve were admitted. I know every nook and corner of the big forest back of the hotel. I ’ll see that you don’t get lost.”

“That will be fine. But you must bring every goodlooking boy in the county and make him bow down and worship Helen. She is not used to it, but she is tickled to death over these Southern boys, and I’m going to give her the best time she ever had in her life.”

“I ’ll do everything you command—except bow down myself. Bob’s agreed to do that.”

She smiled in spite of her effort to look serious, and her mother pinched her arm. She laughed.

“So you and Bob St. Clare were out there plotting before we could get out of the train?”

“Nothing unlawful, I assure you.”

The first day she allowed Gaston to monopolise, and then began his torture. She declared there were others with whom she must be friendly. She determined to give a ball to Helen the next week, and began preparations.

It was a new business for Gaston, but he did his best to please her, in a pathetic half-hearted sort of way. He ran all sorts of errands, and executed her orders with tact.

“Oh! Sallie let the ball go. I don’t care for it. I can do nothing to ever repay you for the good time I’ve been having,” said Helen as they sat in her room one night.

“We are going to have it, I tell you. I don’t care how much Mr. Gaston sulks. I’m not taking orders from him.”

“No, but you’d like to—you know it.”

“What an idea!”

“You know you like him better than all the others put together.”

“Nonsense. I’m as free as a bird.”

“Then what are you blushing for?”

“I’m not.” But her face was scarlet.

“You Southern girls are so queer. The moment you like a man you’re as sly as a cat, and deny that you even know him. When I find the man I love I don’t care who knows it, if he loves me.”

“What do you think of Bob St. Clare?”

“I like him.”

“Hasn’t he made love to you yet?”

“No, and the only one of the crowd who hasn’t. I don’t mind confessing that I never had love made to me before this visit. In Boston it’s a serious thing for a young man to call once. The second call, means a family council, and at the third he must make a declaration of his intentions or face consequences. Down here, the boys don’t seem to have anything to do except to make their girl friends happy, and feel they are the queens of the earth, and that their only mission is to minister to them. And some of your girls are engaged to six boys at the same time.”

“Don’t you like it?”

“It’s glorious. I feel that if I hadn’t come down here to see you I’d have missed the meaning of life.”

“Don’t our boys make love beautifully?”

“I never dreamed of anything like it. They make it so seriously, so dead in earnest, you can’t help believing them.”

“And Bob hasn’t said a word?”

“Hasn’t breathed a hint.”

“Then you have him sure. They are hit hard when they are silent like that. Bob made love to me the second day he ever saw me.”

“Don’t tease me, dear,” said Helen as she put her pretty rosy cheek against the dark beauty of the South. “Do you really think he likes me seriously?”

“He’s crazy about you, goose!”

There was the sound of a kiss.

“I can’t tell stories about it like you, Sallie, I’m afraid I’m in love with him,” she whispered.

“Well, I ’ll make him court you to-morrow or have him thrashed, if you say so.”

“Don’t you dare!”

“Then do just as I tell you about this ball and get yourself up regardless.”

On the night of the ball, Gaston, sitting out on the porch, felt nervous and fidgety, like a fish out of water. He knew he had no business there, and yet he couldn’t go away. They had a quarrel about the ball. Sallie had insisted that Gaston honour her by coming in evening dress whether he danced or not.

“But, Miss Sallie, I ’ll feel like a fool. Everybody in the country knows that I never entered a ball-room.”

“Do you care so much what everybody thinks about you?”

“No, but I care what I think of myself.”

“Well, if you don’t come in full dress suit, I won’t speak to you.”

He turned pale in spite of his effort at self control. Then a queer steel-like look came into his eyes.

“I shall be more than sorry to fail to please you, but I have no dress suit. I have never had time for social frivolities. I can’t afford to buy one for this occasion. ............