Certainly, neither of the two young people, sitting that day on the rustic benches under the tallest cedar, either heard or thought of any of these sad things. Lynn heard mainly the music of the mating birds, and thought mostly of the exquisite curve of the fair cheek almost touching his arm. It was so satiny in its smoothness, so velvety in its softness, and so delicately tinted with the faint, yet warm, glow of rich, rare red, which gleams out of the deep heart of a golden tea-rose. And the glory of her wonderful hair! He felt, as he looked down upon her radiant head, so close to his shoulder, that he had never realized how wonderful its dazzling crown was, until he saw it now with the wondrous light of the sunset re-gilding its fine gold, and with the south wind ruffling its loveliness into more bewitching disorder. As he gazed, a sudden gust leaped over the far green hilltops and lifted the wide brim of her white hat, thus revealing the full beauty of her face. Lynn saw it, with a sharp indrawing of his breath. A yearning so keen, so deep and tender, as to cross the narrow border between pleasure and pain, rushed into the young man's heart. It has been said what an ardent lover of beauty he was. The feeling which swept over him now was the yearning that every true lover of the beautiful feels at the sight of great beauty: the hopeless desire to hold it forever unchanged--be it the delicate flush on an exquisite cheek, which must go as quickly as it comes, the freshness of a perfect flower which must fade with the rising of the sun, or the miracle of the dawn which must soon vanish before the noontide glare. Doris seemed to him Beauty's very self, to be worshipped with all his beauty-worshipping soul, not merely a beautiful girl to be loved with all his human young heart. She wore that day a dress of faded pink muslin, very thin, very soft, very scant, so that it clung close to her slender, supple form--a poor old dress, so old that no one could remember whose it had been first. The bodice opened daintily at the throat in the pretty old fashion known as "surplice" to the Oldfield people; and on the glimpse of snow which drifted between the modest edges of the opening--where the lily of her fairness lay under the rose of the muslin ruffles, just where the sweet curve of her throat melted into the lovely roundness of her bosom--there nestled a little cross of jet held by a narrow band of black velvet, tied around her neck and whitening its whiteness as jet whitens pearl. Such a poor little ornament! Such a poor old dress! And yet the picture that they made when Doris wore them!