"_You_ can, but other people can't. I so wish I could speak it like you, Flora. Do read a page or two with me, will you? I'll get my Reader--shall I?" "What's your hurry? Can't you wait?" He could not wait. He was in a fever of impatience to inhale the whole of the Gentile language--definitions, spelling, pronunciation, and all--with one desperate effort. It was the one great impediment that seemed to stand between him and the enchanted new world that had revealed itself to him. "Oh, do hear me read--may you live long, Flora! It somehow draws mo as with a kind of impure force. Will you?" "All right," she yielded, with kindly curiosity at the fervor of his request, and feeling flattered. He had been reading perhaps a quarter of an hour when he grew absent-minded. "You must have skipped a line again," she said, in an awkward undertone. "Oh, yes!" They were seated at a respectful distance, with the corner of the marble table between them, her full, well-modeled bust erect and stately against the pier-glass. She wore a waist of dark-blue silk, trimmed with red, and there was a red ribbon in her shock of inky hair. Presently she leaned forward to see a mispronounced word for herself. Their heads found themselves close together. Her ivory cheek almost touched his. "Where is it?" she questioned, under her breath. He made no reply. His glance was riveted to her raven eyelashes. A dash of scarlet lurking under her chin dazed his brain. After a slight pause he said, as he timidly stroked her burning cheek:-- "It is so smooth!" She had an impulse to withdraw her face, but felt benumbed. He went on patting her, until, meeting with no resistance, his lips touched her cheek, in a gingerly kiss. Both lowered their eyes. They were silent, but their hearts, each conscious of the other's beatings, throbbed wildly. "Bad boy!" she then whispered, without raising her head. After another silence, as their eyes met, they burst into a subdued, nervous titter. "You must not do that again," she said. "Is this the kind of pious man you are?" "Don't say that, Flora--pray don't. You know it hurts my feelings when you speak like that," he implored her. And impelled by the embarrassed, affectionate sadness of her mien, he seized her hand and fell to kissing first her fingers and then her eyes, as though beseeching them to reveal the meaning of their sombre look. Their lips met and clung together in a trance of passion. When they parted Shaya felt ten years older, and as his eye fell upon the bookcase, he wondered what those glittering, massive tomes were doing there. "Will you tell your father that you want to be my sweetheart?" he asked after a while. His voice and his features appeared to her in a novel aspect. "How do you know I do?" she said, with playful defiance, hiding a burst of admiration which was lost upon the unworldly young man. "Why--don't you?" he demanded solicitously.