While the two joss-sticks sent up into the rose-perfumed air faint spirals of an alien fragrance, the two girls sat in front of the confident young face looking out of the silver locket, and talked endlessly about the owner. Hildegarde found it subtly intoxicating to have so keen an auditor—a sharer even (to the humble extent possible for extreme youth) in the great pivotal romance of existence. And then Bella had such wonderful inspirations. It was she who saw the larger fitness in Mr. Mar’s habit of going fishing on Saturday afternoons. What was that but an arrangement of the gods that he should be so effectually out of the way, that Hildegarde might with safety borrow from his desk the Galbraith letters. Sitting close together on a square of Japanese matting, in front of the rose table, an anxious ear listening for Mrs. Mar’s return from the missionary meeting, the dark head leaned against the fair, while the two girls read and re-read those precious documents, in an atmosphere charged with incense and a palpitating joy. One day, arrived regretfully at the end of the letter they liked best, Bella bent and kissed the signature. Hildegarde’s heart gave a great jump. The daring of that deed was well-nigh impious. Hildegarde, when all by herself, had done the same, but that was different. “Now you know my other secret,” said Bella, very pink—“the tremendousest one of all.” When the first shock had died away, Hildegarde was left with a pitiful tenderness before the disarming frankness of such a confession. Poor little Bella! Why, Jack didn’t even know of her existence. He never would, till in some rare idle hour of the glorious future, Hildegarde should tell him of a little homesick girl she had befriended once at school. But Bella could be depended on to break in upon such gracious forecasting of the future, with a suddenness that made the picture dance, “Which of us two do you suppose Jack’ll fall in love with?” Hildegarde, almost paralyzed by the presumption this implied, barely managed to bring out, “You’re much too little to think of—” “I shan’t be little always.” “You’ll always be more than twelve years younger than Mr. Galbraith.” Hildegarde always said Mr. Galbraith when she wanted to keep the intruder at a distance. But Bella advanced as bold as brass. “_Anyhow_ I think he’ll fall in love with me.” “Of course a person so modest would be likely to appeal to any gentleman.” “No, it’s not my being modest he’ll mind about. It’s other things.” “What other things?” “Well—you—of course you’ve got your eyelashes, and you’re in the full bloom of womanhood. But _I’m_ in the first blush of youth. I think he’ll like that best.” [Illustration: “The two girls sat in front of the confident young face looking out of the silver locket”]