Some few thought they did and called you a "College Widow," because they could remember a certain tall, dark-browed senior who danced ten times with you at the Jay Hop of '87. Others were convinced through them; but these were mostly freshmen upon whom you had not sought to work your magic. How far wrong they were! Yet even you, Florence, I am thinking, were wont, at least in blue moments, to take yourself at the scant valuation these few saw fit to place upon you. But in the end you, even, saw and understood. I am glad, my dear, that I may tell the story. And if those who read it here shall call it fiction, you, and Jim, and I, at least, shall know it for the truth. And then, when I have done, and you have put aside the book, to hide your eyes from him who holds you fonder far than you can know, remember, dear, the glory of it and be glad. I It was June. The rain had been plentiful and the green things of earth rioted joyously in their silent life. In the trees were many birds that sang all day long, and in the night the moon was pale and the shadows were ghostly and the air was sweet with roses that hung in pink profusion from the trellis. The grass was soft beneath the quick, light tread of the lads; and the laughter of the summer-time was in the eyes of all the maids. Many the gay straw-rides to the Lake; frequent and long the walks through leafy lanes, down which the footfalls echoed; sweet the vigils on the broad stone steps distributed about the campus with so much regard for youthful lovers. Too warm for dancing; too languorous for study, that June was made only for swains and sweethearts. At least Jack Houston thought as much, and casting an eye about the town it chanced to fall upon fair Florence. Older than he by half-a-dozen years--older still in the experience of her art--her blue eyes captured him, the sheen of her soft hair, coiled high upon her head, dazzled him; and the night of the day they met he forgot--quite forgot--that half-a-dozen boon companions awaited him in a dingy, hot room down-town, among whom he was to have been the ruling spirit--a party of vain misguided youths of his own class, any one of whom he could drink under the table at a sitting, and nearly all of whom he had. The next night, however, he was of the party and led the roistering and drank longer, harder than the rest, until--in the little hours of the new day--sodden, unsteady, he found his way to his room, where he flung himself heavily upon his bed to sleep until the noonday sun mercifully cast a beam across his heavy eyes and wakened him.