Chapter 4 - Page 2

creature, you see, and not at all clever. I doubt if she had ever heard of Herbert Spencer, much less read his works. If you had told that she had been evolved from a jelly-fish, her brown eyes would only have looked at you wonderingly. You would have conveyed nothing to her.

I must tell you that Minnie was romantic. The woods had bred in her the spirit of poetry. She loved during the holidays to go to the woods with a book, and, seating herself at the foot of a tree, give herself up to dreams--of happy, innocent love, and of calm life, without cloud, blessed by the smile of heaven.

Love is a sudden, shy flame. Love is a blush which mounts to the cheek, and then leaves it pale. Love is the trembling pressure of hands which, for a delicious moment, meet by stealth. Love is sometimes the deep drawn sigh, the languor that steeps the senses, the sudden trembling to which no name can be given. Minnie was in love. The hero of her childhood was the hero of her womanhood. She loved Donald modestly but passionately; but she constantly said to herself in terror, "Oh, Minnie, Minnie, you must take care; guard your secret; never betray yourself."