Robert did not say anything to her about the valedictory until just before the close of the evening, when their last dance together was over.

“I am sorry I did not have a chance to hear your valedictory,” he said.  “I could not come early.”

Ellen blushed and smiled, and made the conventional school-girl response.  “Oh, you didn’t miss anything,” said she.

“I am sure I did,” said the young man, earnestly.  Then he looked at her and hesitated a little.  “I wonder if you would be willing to lend it to me?” he said, then.  “I would be very careful of it, and would return it immediately as soon as I had read it.  I should be so interested in reading it.”

“Certainly, if you wish,” said Ellen, “but I am afraid you won’t think it is good.”

“Of course I shall.  I have been hearing about it, how good it was, and how you broke up the whole house.”

Ellen blushed.  “Oh, that was only because it was the valedictory.  They always clap a good deal for the valedictory.”

“It was because it was you, you dear beauty,” thought the young man, gazing at her, and the impulse to take her in his arms and kiss that blush seized upon him.  “I know they applauded your valedictory because it was worthy of it,” said he, and Ellen’s eyes fell before his, and the blush crept down over her throat, and up to the soft toss of hair on her temples.  The two were standing, and the man gazed at Ellen’s pink arms and neck through the lace of her dress, those incomparable curves of youthful bloom shared by a young girl and a rose; he gazed at that noble, fair head bent not so much before him as before the mystery of life, of which a perception had come to her through his eyes, and he said to himself that there never was such a girl, and he also wondered if he saw aright, he being one who seldom entirely lost the grasp of his own leash.  Having the fancy and the heart of a young man, he was given like others of his kind to looking at every new girl who attracted him in the light of a problem, the unknown quantity being her possible interest for him, but he always worked it out calmly.  He kept himself out of his own shadow, when it came to the question of emotions, in something the same fashion that his uncle Norman did.  Now, looking at Ellen Brewster with the whole of his heart setting towards her in obedience to that law which had brought him into being, he yet was saying quite coolly and loudly in his own inner consciousness, “Wait, wait, wait!  Wait until to-morrow, see how you feel then.  You have felt in much this way before.  Wait!  Perhaps you don’t see it as it is.  Wait!”