Lee was only twenty-one, but his was a very romantic twenty-one, and he filled Stella's ears with so many sweet nothings that she no longer heeded the call of duty. And why shouldn't she be in love and have a lover? Had she not already given the best years of her youth to others? Had she not waited without a thought of rebellion for the coming of the right one? And Love, and Love's mysterious touch, wrought fantastic changes in Stella Beckman's affairs. She and Lee read poetry. She had never known how beautiful poetry was nor how much of it there was to read. He knew the good novels and sent her all that he himself read, and these were plenty! Then, when he was away, he wrote and she wrote, and now and then he wrote some verses to her. There was no real engagement. They never spoke much of the future; the present was too full. Home duties and church interests flagged badly during these two years, and the summer she was twenty-four, it became town talk that this young couple would marry. The Beckmans were very willing. But one day the judge called Lee into his office and wanted to know what these "doings" all meant, asking him if he was "going to marry his mother," and making some rather uncomplimentary Beckman- Burnham comparisons. Lee rather sheepishly told his father there was nothing to worry about. He had much respect, possibly awe, for the old gentleman. The next week Lee left for his final year in law-school. His letters to Stella continued, though he plead his studies as an excuse for their diminished frequency. He did not come home that spring, at Easter. "Work," he wrote Stella. Nor was he ever square to this poor girl, for he never mentioned his relations with Miss Pearl May Rogers. And "shock number three" came, as unhappy Stella read the announcement of his marriage, addressed in the hand of his June city- bride. A lastingly damaging shock it proved to be.