“Ef I could look lak dat, Miss Stella, I’d let ‘em bile me in ile, roast me on a red-hot stove and peel me!” “You are breaking the Ten Commandments, Maggie.” “Yassum, I’d bust a hundred commandments ef I could look lak you.” “I accept the compliment, if I can’t commend your morals.” “Yassum.” A sudden flash of lightning revealed the clouds of a rapidly approaching summer storm. Stella frowned. “It’s going to storm,” she said, fretfully, “Yassum, but he’ll come.” The mistress laughed in spite of herself. “I’m not worrying about his coming, Maggie.” “Nobum, you needn’t worry. He swim er river ef he couldn’t git here no odder way--dar he is now!” His familiar knock echoed through the hall and the maid hastened to open the door. When Stella stood before him, John seized both her hands and looked into her deep eyes with silent rapture. “How glorious you are to-night!” he whispered passionately. She made no answer save the sensitive smile of triumph which lighted her face and quivered through her form. “I meant to find a seat on the lawn to-night, but it’s going to rain.” “Yes, I ran, to get here first,” he cried with boyish enthusiasm--“It’s raining now, but the old davenport under the stairs is cosey on a rainy night.” She looked at the panel door and hesitated. “You’re not afraid of ghosts from below I hope?” he laughed. “No, I’ve locked the iron door,” she announced soberly, taking her seat by his side. With a vivid flash of lightning followed by a crash of thunder the storm broke, the big raindrops mixed with hail rattling furiously against the windows. Stella nestled closer to his side, and John turned his swarthy, eager face toward her. “Now, while the storm roars,” he whispered, “and shuts out the world, drawing us closer together--so close I feel that there is no world beyond the touch of your hand and the music of your voice--won’t you tell me what my heart is starving to hear?” “Do you realise what it means for a girl to say to a man, ‘I love you?’” she asked slowly. “I do,” was the quick answer. “In all its depths?” “Yes. It means the utter surrender of soul and body or it means nothing!” “And yet, you ask that I say it?” “I know that I’m not worthy, but Love has always dared to claim its own, soul crying to soul, mate calling to mate--I love you! I love you! Ah! The story is old as the throb of life, yet always new and full of wonder. I know it’s too much to ask, yet I dare to ask it.” “There should be no shadows between those who thus love, should there?” she asked with a far-away dreamy look as if his burning words had caught her spirit in their spell. “No,” he answered, solemnly. “A thousand times I’ve longed to tell you how tender was my sympathy for you in the tragedy that threw its shadow across your young life in this hall a few months ago.” “And yet you didn’t,” she said reproachfully, studying him keenly and furtively, with her head bowed as if in grief for the memory of her father.