Nancy turned pink by way of answer.  As a matter of fact, she was nearer being happy then than she had ever been.  They fell into an intimate conversation—­that is, Glenn talked, and the girl listened.  He explained his hopes, ambitions, prospects.  He talked eagerly and impetuously.  He wished her to understand him, to know all about him,—­what he was, what he hoped to be.  A boy in love is like that.

In return for this confidence Nancy explained that she hated oatmeal, and Hannah More; some of these days she meant to buy every copy of Hannah More she could lay her hands on, and burn them.  Of herself, her past, she said nothing.

“And so you’re going to be a doctor!” she turned the conversation back to him, as being much more interesting.

“Yes.  Or rather, I’m going to be a great surgeon.”  And then he asked, smilingly: 

“And you—­what do you want to be?”

“I want to be happy,” said Nancy, half fiercely.

“There isn’t any reason why you shouldn’t be—­a girl like you.”

Nancy looked a bit doubtful.  But no, he wasn’t poking fun.  And after a pause, he asked, as one putting himself to the test: 

“Miss Anne—­Nancy—­do you think you could be happy—­with me?”

“You?” breathed Nancy, all a-tremble.  She thought she could be happier with Glenn than with anybody else.  Why! there wasn’t anybody else!  That is, nobody that cared.  She was afraid to say so.  But her moved and changed face said it for her.

“Because, if you could be happy with me, why shouldn’t you be?” asked Glenn, brilliantly.  But Nancy understood, and her heart crowded into her throat with delight, and terror, and a sort of agony.  She felt that she loved and adored this boy to distraction.  She would have adored anybody who loved and desired her, who found her fair.  But she didn’t understand that; neither did Glenn.

“You care?” said the boy, leaning toward her.  They were running slowly, along a road high above the river.  “Nancy, you care?”

Care?  Of course she cared!  She considered him the most beautiful and desirable of mortals; she was so enraptured, so thrilled with the astounding fact that he cared for her, that she couldn’t speak, but looked at him with swimming eyes.  He brought the car to a stop, slipped an arm around her shoulder, and drew her close.  She knew that something momentous was going to happen to her, and looked at him, full of a sweet terror.  “I love you!” said Glenn, and kissed her on the mouth.

His beard was the ghost of down on his cheek; her hair hung in a braid to her waist; their kiss was the kiss of youth,—­tender, passionately pure.  Everything but that morning face, pale with young emotion, looking at her with enamored eyes, vanished from her mind; everything else counted for nothing, went like chaff upon the wind.  The one fact alone remained:  Glenn loved her!  Her senses were in a delicious tumult from the power and the glory of it:  Glenn loved her!  It was as if a skylark sang in her breast, as if she walked in a rosy and new-born world.  Had Nancy been called upon to die for him then, she would have gone to her death shining-eyed, fleet-footed, joyous.