"I am so glad you’ve come. I have been so troubled, Jack. Just before you came I was sitting here, and I thought I saw Ophelia in that pool down there where the spring branch goes into the deep hole under the willows, like my picture in Shakespeare." "Nonsense," I said, drawing her to me. "Tell me what you ate for supper last night? I believe you are in love." She turned white, and her lips were drawn. "No one loves me," she said, and she blushed crimson, "no one in the right way. It is just like Ophelia, and so I was thinking—" "No one shall love you any other way," I said, "unless they first reckon with me, for I love you," I added tenderly, for I pitied her so much. She looked up, smiling through her tears. Then both of her arms were around my neck. "Jack, Jack!" Her hands were in mine: her eyes, looking up to mine, had tears in them. I saw that she had misunderstood, but I saw that if I were to save her I must save her through love. I felt the hot blood rush, for very shame, into my face, stinging it red for punishment. "Forgive me, Elsie," I began, my throat choked with shame, "I can’t explain, I didn’t—" For answer she kissed me, both arms around my neck, as she said, "Oh, I am so happy." She was silent, her hands in mine. They burned me, yet to turn them loose, to tell her truthfully, and she keyed so to the sensitiveness and unthinking romance—I thought of the pool and Ophelia.... She laughed happily: "Tell me, Jack, your Elsie, when did you find that you loved me so? Was it because of my thoughts of you in the horror and folly of my flirtation with Braxton Bragg?" "Never mind," I said; "you are never to mention that name to me." "Oh, Jack," she hid her face on my bosom. "You are not to speak of anything disagreeable. Only we’ll just love each other, Elsie." "Oh, please, please, just let me tell you a little, so that you will always understand me—your silly Heart’s-Ease. It was this way, Jack: suppose now, suppose you were placed this way—that you were very lonely—always had lived in a cabin, and so much you wished to see the world—that in you was a strange, queer longing, a feeling that you had been born for higher things—and—all at once right out of the sky—that which you longed for came—the star of your soul." She hid her head on my arm. She was weeping. "Go on, child," I said; "I am listening. "And he—he would not tell you he was your prince; then you felt that strange feeling again, only worse—to go away—to leave yourself—well, then another comes—I do not know, only he did—I had only seen him twice, and each time he was very kind, but so fulsome and so bold, that well—I would not meet him again and so he wrote...." She was silent for a moment and then she spoke suddenly. "Oh, I fear I did wrong to see the other—to answer his note. I was so unhappy then—so wretched then, for I did not know that—that—you loved me—then!" "Elsie, promise me—" I began.