“Are there many people like you out in the world?” “Thousands of them,” said Eric, laughing. She looked gravely at him. Then she gave her head a quick decided little shake. “I do not think so,” she wrote. “I do not know much of the world, but I do not think there are many people like you in it.” One evening, when the far-away hills and fields were scarfed in gauzy purples, and the intervales were brimming with golden mists, Eric carried to the old orchard a little limp, worn volume that held a love story. It was the first thing of the kind he had ever read to her, for in the first novel he had lent her the love interest had been very slight and subordinate. This was a beautiful, passionate idyl exquisitely told. He read it to her, lying in the grass at her feet; she listened with her hands clasped over her knee and her eyes cast down. It was not a long story; and when he had finished it he shut the book and looked up at her questioningly. “Do you like it, Kilmeny?” he asked. Very slowly she took her slate and wrote, “Yes, I like it. But it hurt me, too. I did not know that a person could like anything that hurt her. I do not know why it hurt me. I felt as if I had lost something that I never had. That was a very silly feeling, was it not? But I did not understand the book very well, you see. It is about love and I do not know anything about love. Mother told me once that love is a curse, and that I must pray that it would never enter into my life. She said it very earnestly, and so I believed her. But your book teaches that it is a blessing. It says that it is the most splendid and wonderful thing in life. Which am I to believe?” “Love--real love--is never a curse, Kilmeny,” said Eric gravely. “There is a false love which IS a curse. Perhaps your mother believed it was that which had entered her life and ruined it; and so she made the mistake. There is nothing in the world--or in heaven either, as I believe--so truly beautiful and wonderful and blessed as love.” “Have you ever loved?” asked Kilmeny, with the directness of phrasing necessitated by her mode of communication which was sometimes a little terrible. She asked the question simply and without embarrassment. She knew of no reason why love might not be discussed with Eric as other matters--music and books and travel--might be. “No,” said Eric--honestly, as he thought, “but every one has an ideal of love whom he hopes to meet some day--‘the ideal woman of a young man’s dream.’ I suppose I have mine, in some sealed, secret chamber of my heart.” “I suppose your ideal woman would be beautiful, like the woman in your book?”