"I'm afraid you've asked a bigger question than I can answer, dear," he said, with serious accent. "I've been wondering lately whether the world hasn't lost the secret of happy mating and marrying. A more beautiful even life I have never seen than the one in the home of my childhood. Yet my mother was only fourteen and my father twenty-one when they were married. You see, dear, that was in the old days when boys and girls were not afraid--when love dared to laugh at cares about houses and lands and goods and chattels, when Nature claimed her own, when the voices of the deepest impulses of our bodies and souls were heard first and the chatterings about careers and social triumphs were left to settle themselves. Now folks only allow themselves to marry in cold blood, calculating with accuracy their bank accounts. My mother had been married six months at your age, and yet here I sit on a pedestal and have the impudence to talk to you as a child----" "But you're not impudent, Jim," she broke in eagerly, "and I understand." Her eyes were looking steadily into his. "I'm beginning to wonder," Stuart continued, "whether Nature made a mistake when she made woman as she is. I once knew a girl of fifteen to whom I believe life was the deepest tragedy or the highest joy of which her heart will ever be capable. Else why did the blood come and go so quickly in her cheeks?" A sudden flush mantled Harriet's face and she turned away that he might not see. "Why did she fuel the loud beating of her heart at the approach of the man she imagined to be her hero? Why did she drop her eyes in confusion----" The deep brown eyes were looking into his now with a steady light. She had mastered herself and he could not guess her secret. Her heart beat so loudly she wondered if he could hear. Stuart's voice had grown dreamy, as if a thousand tender memories were trooping into his heart from the past and he was talking to himself. "Why were her hands so moist and warm to the touch of the boy who held them, and why did they tremble so violently? Why did she turn so pale?--so pale and so suddenly, he thought she was about to faint? When again in life can one see this moment of the blossoming of both soul and body--this quivering readiness for the touch of the lover for whose coming she waits with such frank and honest eagerness?" Again the little figure bent forward with breathless interest as she slowly asked: "Oh, Jim, when did you see this?" Stuart's head bent low and rested between his hands. "I loved such a little girl once, dear----" Harriet's face suddenly flushed with joy. It was too wonderful to be true, but it was true! And he had chosen this curious way to tell her. Her voice sank to the softest whisper as she bent closer: "And you love her still, Jim?" His head drooped lower as he sighed: