She got an introduction and felt happy; he seemed just as nice to speak to as he was to look at—and that isn’t often the case, you know. “I like him well enough to try to be nice to him,” she said. “I hope I don’t have any more of these beastly sties for a month or two,” and quite forgot that she had any more infirmities—as who would not? For a time all the shyness which had accompanied her from her youth upward vanished literally as if by magic. She would go down into the other school at every opportunity, just to see the young man and speak to him. It was the happiest and most natural part of her life. “I wonder if I could make him love me too,” she thought. And she used to watch him in church or wherever else it might be, and keep saying, “Love me, love me, love me,” and in some ways it was very great fun. The greatest fun was to say, “Love me, love me,” when she was talking to him, in a voice but he couldn’t hear. But there came a day when all this golden love cloud gathered into one of purple. Deborah fell seriously in love with him, and all the fun and the laughter died out of it. Still everyone went on laughing just the same as on that first day when she ran into school and told them she had found an ideal man. And because she had begun by laughing herself she was bound to keep it up, and no one saw the difference. One day she saw him talking to another girl, and it was the first time she had ever seen him speaking to another woman. The girl was very pretty, with blue eyes and brown curly hair, and she was little too, but she was a pretty figure. Deborah became madly jealous. “I hate her, I hate her, and I hate him too,” she said. “What does she want, meddling with him? He will come to like her best.” And then she went home and looked in the glass. Yes, there was another of those ugly disfigurements puffing up the whole of one cheek. “Why is she so pretty and I so plain?” she thought. “If I were as pretty as she is I—I—I what? I nothing.” A prize distribution took place in the town some six weeks or so after. Now, though by this time it was the middle of summer, the wind and the rain on that particular day were extreme, and so Deborah found as she took some dozen girls down to receive prizes. It was a long walk, and by the time they got there none of them looked very presentable. She never forgot that day, for had the Fates conspired they could not have made her appear more disreputable. Her hair was dishevelled and her fringe out of curl, and her hat, which had blown off in the journey down, kept lurching constantly to one side. But the first person she set eyes on when she came to the journey’s end was the young man. For the time being she forgot her appearance in the delight of seeing him. They sat together during the ceremony, and afterwards walked home together, and still she forgot to think of her untidy state. But when she was inside the house she went upstairs.