head, the averted eye, the faltering voice, the wincing figure--
these, and not the unshrinking gaze and frank reply, are the true
signals of passion.  Even in my short life I had learned as much as
that--or had inherited it in that race memory which we call instinct.

Gladys was full of every womanly quality.  Some judged her to be
cold and hard; but such a thought was treason.  That delicately
bronzed skin, almost oriental in its coloring, that raven hair,
the large liquid eyes, the full but exquisite lips,--all the
stigmata of passion were there.  But I was sadly conscious that
up to now I had never found the secret of drawing it forth. 
However, come what might, I should have done with suspense and
bring matters to a head to-night.  She could but refuse me, and
better be a repulsed lover than an accepted brother.

So far my thoughts had carried me, and I was about to break the
long and uneasy silence, when two critical, dark eyes looked
round at me, and the proud head was shaken in smiling reproof. 
"I have a presentiment that you are going to propose, Ned.  I do
wish you wouldn't; for things are so much nicer as they are."

I drew my chair a little nearer.  "Now, how did you know that I
was going to propose?" I asked in genuine wonder.

"Don't women always know?  Do you suppose any woman in the world
was ever taken unawares?  But--oh, Ned, our friendship has been so
good and so pleasant!  What a pity to spoil it!  Don't you feel how
splendid it is that a young man and a young woman should be able
to talk face to face as we have talked?"

"I don't know, Gladys.  You see, I can talk face to face with--
with the station-master."  I can't imagine how that official came
into the matter; but in he trotted, and set us both laughing. 
"That does not satisfy me in the least.  I want my arms round you,
and your head on my breast, and--oh, Gladys, I want----"

She had sprung from her chair, as she saw signs that I proposed
to demonstrate some of my wants.  "You've spoiled everything,
Ned," she said.  "It's all so beautiful and natural until this
kind of thing comes in!  It is such a pity!  Why can't you
control yourself?"

"I didn't invent it," I pleaded.  "It's nature.  It's love."

"Well, perhaps if both love, it may be different.  I have never
felt it."

"But you must--you, with your beauty, with your soul!  Oh, Gladys,
you were made for love!  You must love!"

"One must wait till it comes."

"But why can't you love me, Gladys?  Is it my appearance, or what?"

She did unbend a little.  She put forward a hand--such a gracious,
stooping attitude it was--and she pressed back my head.  Then she
looked into my upturned face with a very wistful smile.

"No it isn't that," she said at last.  "You're not a conceited
boy by nature, and so I can safely tell you it is not that. 
It's deeper."

"My character?"

She nodded severely.

"What can I do to mend it?  Do sit down and talk it over. 
No, really, I won't if you'll only sit down!"

She looked at me with a wondering distrust which was much more to
my mind than her whole-hearted confidence.  How primitive and
bestial it looks when you put it down in black and white!--and
perhaps after all it is only a feeling peculiar to myself. 
Anyhow, she sat down.

"Now tell me what's amiss with me?"

"I'm in love with somebody else," said she. 

It was my turn to jump out of my chair. 

"It's nobody in particular," she explained, laughing at the
expression of my face: "only an ideal.  I've never met the kind
of man I mean."

"Tell me about him.  What does he look like?"

"Oh, he might look very much like you."

"How dear of you to say that!  Well, what is it that he does that
I don't do?  Just say the word,--teetotal, vegetarian, aeronaut,
theosophist, superman.  I'll have a try at it, Gladys, if you
will only give me an idea what would please you."

She laughed at the elasticity of my character.  "Well, in the
first place, I don't think my ideal would speak like that,"
said she.  "He would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt
himself to a silly girl's whim.  But, above all, he must be a man
who could do, who could act, who could look Death in the face and
have no fear of him, a man of great deeds and strange experiences.