Late spring down on the Maryland farm:  you know it by the intense blue through that quaint window draped with such a lushness of vines, such a glory of blossom.  In at the open door, whose frame is arabesqued with hanging sprays of sweetbrier, with the pendent nest, with fluttering moth-wings sunshine-dusted, with crowds of bursting buds, pours the mellow sun in one great stream, pours from the peach-orchards the fragrant breeze laden with bird-song.  A girl, standing aside, with clasped hands drooping before her, her gaze upon a shadow on the floor in the midst of that broad stream of light.  Casting that shadow, under the lintel, a young man clad for travel.  Since he left his Southern home, ruin has befallen it; he dares not ask one lapped in luxury to share such broken fortunes as his seem to-day, even though such stout shoulders, so valiant a heart, buffet them.  If she loves, it is enough; they can wait; their treasure neither moth nor rust can corrupt; their jewel is imperishable.  If she loves—­He is looking in her eyes, holding to her his hands.  Slowly the girl meets his glance.  A long look, one long, silent look, infinitude in its assurance, its glow wrapping her, blue and smiling as heaven itself, reaching him like the evening star seen through tears,—­a word, a touch, had profaned with a trait of earthliness so remote, so spiritual a betrothal.  He goes, and still the upward-smiling girl sees the sunshine, hears the bird-song,—­a boy dashes by the door and down the path to meet the last, close-lingering embrace of two waiting arms at the gate,—­and then there is nothing but Vivia bending and gazing at herself in the glass with a flushed and fevered eagerness of rapture.

    “The wild, sweet tunes that darkly deep
    Thrill through thy veins and shroud thy sleep,
    That swing thy blood with proud, glad sway,
    And beat thy life’s arterial play,—­
      Still wilt thou have this music sweep
      Along thy brain its pulsing leap,—­
    Keep love away! keep love away!

    “The joy of peace that wide and high
    Like light floods through the soaring sky,
    The day divine, the night akin,
    Heaven in the heart, ah, wilt thou win,
      The secret of the hoarded years,
      Life rounded as the shining spheres,—­
    Let love come in! let love come in!”

she sang, to case her heart of its swelling gladness.

But here Vivia dared not concentrate her recollections, dared not dally with such distant delight,—­twisted and tossed her hair into its coils, and once more opened the letter.  Ray had not lived for three years under converging influences, years which are glowing wax beneath the seal of fresh impressions, years when one puts off or takes on the tendencies of a lifetime,—­Ray had not lived those three school-years without contracting habits, whims, determinations of his own:  let her have Beltran’s reasons to meet Ray’s objections.