Therefore we moved a trifle closer together, Stella and I, and were commonly miserable over the _Weltschmerz_. After a little a distant whippoorwill woke me from a chaos of reverie, and I turned to Stella, with a vague sense that we two were the only people left in the whole world, and that I was very, very fond of her. Stella's head was leaned backward. Her lips were parted, and the moonlight glinted in her eyes. Her eyes were blue. "Don't!" said Stella, faintly. I did.... It was a matter out of my volition, out of my planning. And, oh, the wonder, and sweetness, and sacredness of it! I thought, even in the instant; and, oh, the pity that, after all, it is slightly disappointing.... Stella was not angry, as I had half expected. "That was dear of you," she said, impulsively, "but don't try to do it again." There was the wisdom of centuries in this mandate of Stella's as she rose from the bench. The spell was broken, utterly. "I think," said Stella, in the voice of a girl of fifteen, "I think we'd better go and dance some more." 5 In the crude morning I approached Stella, with a fatuous smile. She apparently both perceived and resented my bearing, although she never once looked at me. There was something of great interest to her in the distance, apparently down by the springhouse; she was flushed and indignant; and her eyes wouldn't, couldn't, and didn't turn for an instant in my direction. I fidgeted. "If," said she, impersonally, "if you believe it was because of _you_, you are very much mistaken. It would have been the same with anybody. You don't understand, and I don't either. Anyhow, I think you are a mess, and I hate you. Go away from me!" And she stamped her foot in a fine rage. For the moment I entertained an un-Christian desire that Stella had been born a boy. In that case, I felt, I would, just then, have really enjoyed sitting upon the back of her head, and grinding her nose into the lawn, and otherwise persuading her to cry "'Nough." These virile pleasures being denied me, I sought for comfort in discourteous speech. "Umph-huh!" said I, "and you think you're mighty smart, don't you? Well, I don't want you pawing around me any more, either. I won't have it, do you understand! That was what I was going to tell you anyhow, you kissing-bug, even if you hadn't acted so smart. And you can just stick that right in your pipe and smoke it, you old Miss Smart Alec." Thereupon I--wisely--departed without delay. A rock struck me rather forcibly between the shoulder blades, but I did not deign to notice this phenomenon. "You can't fight girls with fists," I reflected. "You've just got to talk to them in the right way." 2. _He Loves Extensively_ I saw no more of Stella for a lengthy while, since within two days of the events recorded it pleased my mother to seek out another summer resort.