“Out in the golden west to-night I’m dreaming, The moon shines o’er the mountains, clear and cold; I’m going East where candle-lights are gleaming, Again to wander through the scenes of old. The old mill wheel seems silent, all is lonely, No loving form is waiting there for me. In fancy I can hear a dear voice calling: ‘Dear heart, I’m sleeping ‘neath the acorn tree.’” “How sweet and beautifully sad!” affirmed Miss Gardner. “Death is always so sweet and sad, isn’t it, Mr. Forge? But then, not so sad as disappointed love. Have you ever been in love, Mr. Forge?” “Yes,” responded Nathan thickly. “Oh, how romantic! And did you suffer a great disappointment?” “Oh, I lived through it,” returned the boy with a sad laugh. “But what you really mean to say is that it left its scars on your soul. True love always does that, doesn’t it, Mr. Forge?” Nathan began to feel that the temperature of the room was uncomfortably high. “I guess I don’t know much about true love,” he returned. “To be frank, I’ve never run up against the real thing.” “I understand perfectly. You’re waiting for some great overwhelming passion to come into your life and sweep you off your feet. There’s always an overwhelming passion in everybody’s life, isn’t there, Mr. Forge? How true! How true!” Nathan had an uncomfortable hunch that the Gardner girl was talking drivel. So he put a new piece of music on the rack before her. “Let’s play this,” he suggested in lieu of a lowered window. They hollered through “The Good Old Summer-Time,” or at least Nathan did, and old man Cuttner in the next room—the same who liked music even in his sleep—arose on one elbow in the dark and swept his arm around the floor at the head of his bed in hope of locating a shoe which he could hurl at the door. Not finding any shoe, however, he slammed over angrily and jerked the bedclothes over his head, muttering something about brainless young cootes who didn’t have gray matter enough to let honest folks get a good night’s rest, and who in hell had Carrie picked up so quick before she’d been in town two days? “And have you ever been in love?” asked Nathan amusedly, as he sought in the avalanche of melodious sentiment for more breaches of the Cuttner nocturnal peace. Miss Gardner played the scale with one finger. “Oh, there’s a dear-enough boy back in A-higher that loves me to distraction. I suppose I’ll marry him eventually. But I can’t quite decide whether I love him enough yet.” The sheet-music titles fused before Nathan’s gaze and his stomach turned over. “Has he asked you yet?” was Nathan’s quiet question. He hummed through the tune of the sheet upon his knees—“On the Hills of My Old New Hampshire Home”—as he asked it. “Oh, yes!” (Long sigh!) “But there’s quite a story to it. Some day maybe I’ll tell it to you. I’d really like your advice as to what it’s best to do.”