"I love you consumingly! O Barbara, Barbara Garnet, let that serve for us both! Words could not tell my joy, if I could find in you this day a like passion for me. But the seed and soil of it are here to my sight in what I find you to be, and all I ask is that you will let reason fix the only relationship that can truly feed the flame which I know--I _know_--my love will kindle." "O Mr. Fair, I begged you not to ask!" "Do not answer! Not now; to-morrow morning. If you can't answer then----" "I can answer now, Mr. Fair. Why should I keep you in suspense?" Such agitation came into the young man's face as Barbara had never thought to see. His low voice quivered. "No! No! I beseech you not to answer yet! Wait! Wait and weigh! O Barbara! weigh well and I will wait well! Wait! O wait until you have weighed all things well--my fortune, love, life, and the love of all who love me--O weigh them all well, beloved! beloved one!" Without warning, a grosbeak--the one whose breast is stained with the blood of the rose--began his soft, sweet song so close overhead that Barbara started up, and he flew. She waited to catch the strain again, and as it drifted back her glance met her lover's. She smiled tenderly, but was grave the next moment and said, "Let us go back." Nevertheless they went very slowly, culling and exchanging wild flowers as they went. On her doorstep she said, "Now, in the morning----" "How soon may I come?" he asked. "Immediately after chapel." LXXII. MY GOOD GRACIOUS, MISS BARB "Good-by," said Fair, with an ardent last look. "Good-by," softly echoed Barbara, with eyelids down, and passed in. According to a habit contracted since coming to college she took a brief glimpse of the hat-rack to see if it held any other than girls' hats. Not that she expected any visitor of the sort that can't wear that kind, but--you know how it is--the unexpected does sometimes call. Besides, Mr. Fair had told her whom he was to meet in Springfield next day. But the hat-rack said no. Nevertheless she glanced also into the tiny parlor. The widow sat there alone, reading the _Congregationalist_. She looked up with sweet surprise, and Barbara, not giving her time to speak, said: "The woods are so per-fect-ly fas-ci-nat-ing I'm neg-lect-ing my cor-re-spond-ence." She dangled her hat at her knee and slowly mounted to her room, humming a dance, but longing, as some sick wild thing, for a seclusion she had no hope to find. The two college mates who had driven with her in the morning were lolling on her bed. They recognized the earliness of her return by a mischievous sparkle of eyes which only gathered emphasis from the absence of any open comment. "Barbara," said one, as she doubled a pillow under her neck and took on the Southern drawl, "par-don my in-quis-i-tive-ness, but if it isn't an im-per-ti-nent ques-tion--or even if it is--how man-y but-ter-cups did you pro-cure, and alas! where are they now?"