Thorpe crossed the pole trail, and for the first time found himself by her side. The warm summer odors were in the air, a dozen lively little birds sang in the brush along the rail, the sunlight danced and flickered through the openings. Then suddenly they were among the pines, and the air was cool, the vista dim, and the bird songs inconceivably far away. The girl walked directly to the foot of a pine three feet through, and soaring up an inconceivable distance through the still twilight. “This is Jimmy,” said she gravely. “He is a dear good old rough bear when you don't know him, but he likes me. If you put your ear close against him,” she confided, suiting the action to the word, “you can hear him talking to himself. This little fellow is Tommy. I don't care so much for Tommy because he's sticky. Still, I like him pretty well, and here's Dick, and that's Bob, and the one just beyond is Jack.” “Where is Harry?” asked Thorpe. “I thought one in a woods was quite sufficient,” she replied with the least little air of impertinence. “Why do you name them such common, everyday names?” he inquired. “I'll tell you. It's because they are so big and grand themselves, that it did not seem to me they needed high-sounding names. What do you think?” she begged with an appearance of the utmost anxiety. Thorpe expressed himself as in agreement. As the half-quizzical conversation progressed, he found their relations adjusting themselves with increasing rapidity. He had been successively the mystic devotee before his vision, the worshipper before his goddess; now he was unconsciously assuming the attitude of the lover before his mistress. It needs always this humanizing touch to render the greatest of all passions livable. And as the human element developed, he proved at the same time greater and greater difficulty in repressing himself and greater and greater fear of the results in case he should not do so. He trembled with the desire to touch her long slender hand, and as soon as his imagination had permitted him that much he had already crushed her to him and had kissed passionately her starry face. Words hovered on his lips longing for flight. He withheld them by an effort that left him almost incoherent, for he feared with a deadly fear lest he lose forever what the vision had seemed to offer to his hand. So he said little, and that lamely, for he dreaded to say too much. To her playful sallies he had no riposte. And in consequence he fell more silent with another boding--that he was losing his cause outright for lack of a ready word.