William, seated upon a stool at her feet, gazed up at the amber head, divinely splashed by the rain of moonlight.  The fire with which she spoke stirred him as few things had ever stirred him.  He knew she had just revealed a side of herself which she reserved for only the chosen few who were capable of understanding her, and he fell into a hushed rapture.  It seemed to him that there was a sacredness about this moment, and he sought vaguely for something to say that would live up to it and not be out of keeping.  Then, like an inspiration, there came into his head some words he had read that day and thought beautiful.  He had found them beneath an illustration in a magazine, and he spoke them almost instinctively.

“It was wonderful of you to say that to me,” he said.  “I shall never forget it!”

“It’s my dream!” Miss Pratt exclaimed, again, with the same enthusiasm.  “It’s my dream.”

“You would make a glorious actress!” he said.

At that her mood changed.  She laughed a laugh like a sweet little girl’s laugh (not Jane’s) and, setting her rocking-chair in motion, cuddled the fuzzy white doglet in her arms.  “Ickle boy Baxter t’yin’ flatterbox us, tunnin’ Flopit!  No’ty, no’ty flatterbox!”

“No, no!” William insisted, earnestly.  “I mean it.  But—­but—­”

“But whatcums?”

“What do you think about actors and actresses making love to each other on the stage?  Do you think they have to really feel it, or do they just pretend?”

“Well,” said Miss Pratt, weightily, “sometimes one way, sometimes the other.”

William’s gravity became more and more profound.  “Yes, but how can they pretend like that?  Don’t you think love is a sacred thing, Cousin Lola?”

Fictitious sisterships, brotherships, and cousinships are devices to push things along, well known to seventeen and even more advanced ages.  On the wonderful evening of their first meeting William and Miss Pratt had cozily arranged to be called, respectively, “Ickle boy Baxter” and “Cousin Lola.” (Thus they had broken down the tedious formalities of their first twenty minutes together.)

“Don’t you think love is sacred?” he repeated in the deepest tone of which his vocal cords were capable.

“Ess,” said Miss Pratt.

“I do!” William was emphatic.  “I think love is the most sacred thing there is.  I don’t mean some kinds of love.  I mean real love.  You take some people, I don’t believe they ever know what real love means.  They talk about it, maybe, but they don’t understand it.  Love is something nobody can understand unless they feel it and and if they don’t understand it they don’t feel it.  Don’t you think so?”

“Ess.”

“Love,” William continued, his voice lifting and thrilling to the great theme—­“love is something nobody can ever have but one time in their lives, and if they don’t have it then, why prob’ly they never will.  Now, if a man really loves a girl, why he’d do anything in the world she wanted him to.  Don’t you think so?”