"This country has been keeping bachelor’s hall long enough," she dogmatized, placing one slim finger affirmatively in the center of one white palm. "Women are going to have more to do with government. Here in California we’ll be voting in a few years. When it comes, John, I’m going to be ready for it." The idea seemed so strange at first,—this dimpled creature voting,—that John could not repress a smile. But Bessie, her blue eyes round and sober, was too earnest to protest the smile. "Father’s going up the line; you know that, of course," she affirmed. "He’ll be a big man and rich almost before we know it; but they’re not going to make any social buzz-buzz out of little Bessie. That’s why I’m aiming at Stanford. I’m going in for political economy. When woman’s opportunity comes, there are lots of women that will be ready for it. I’m going to be one of them." Bessie nodded her head so emphatically that some crinkly brown locks fell roguishly about her ears, and John was obliged to smile again; but for all that the big man was very proud of the purpose so seriously announced. Besides, with Bessie’s manner more than her words there went an impression of the growing depth and dignity of her character that was to John as delightful as some other things his eyes were boldly busy in observing. But presently these busy observations and reflections kindled in him again an overwhelming sense of the wealth of woman in this aspiring, dimpled girl. With this went an exciting vision of the bliss which life holds in store for any mutually adapted man and woman where each is consumed with desire for the other. "Bessie!" he broke out impulsively, arising quickly and looking down into her upturned, intent face. "Doesn’t everything we’ve just been talking about seem unimportant?" Bessie’s features expressed wonder and delightful anticipation. "Beside ourselves, I mean," John went on, and then added impetuously: "To me, this afternoon, there is just one fact in the universe, Bessie, and that fact is YOU!" The light of a shining happiness kindled like a flash on the girl’s face, and she threw out her hands to him in the old impulsive way. "Just one thing I feel," John rushed along, seizing the outstretched hands and playfully but tenderly lifting her until she stood before him, "just one thing that I want to do in the world above everything else, and that is to love you, Bessie, to love you!" The words as he breathed them seemed to come up out of the deeps of a nature rich in knowledge of what such love could mean. Bessie, her face enraptured, did not speak, but her dimples behaved skittishly, and there was a sharp little catch of her breath.