“But it’s my name,” he replied quietly.

“Nonsense!  It’s only a stupid translation of a stupid nickname.  They might as well call you ‘Water’ at once.”

“But you said you liked it.”

“Well, so I do.  But don’t you see—­I—­oh dear! you don’t understand.”

Low did not reply, but turned his head with resigned gravity towards the deeper woods.  Grasping the barrel of his rifle with his left hand, he threw his right arm across his left wrist and leaned slightly upon it with the habitual ease of a Western hunter—­doubly picturesque in his own lithe, youthful symmetry.  Miss Nellie looked at him from under her eyelids, and then half defiantly raised her head and her dark lashes.  Gradually an almost magical change came over her features; her eyes grew larger and more and more yearning, until they seemed to draw and absorb in their liquid depths the figure of the young man before her; her cold face broke into an ecstasy of light and color; her humid lips parted in a bright, welcoming smile, until, with an irresistible impulse, she arose, and throwing back her head stretched towards him two hands full of vague and trembling passion.

In another moment he had seized them, kissed them, and, as he drew her closer to his embrace, felt them tighten around his neck.  “But what name do you wish to call me?” he asked, looking down into her eyes.

Miss Nellie murmured something confidentially to the third button of his hunting shirt.  “But that,” he replied, with a smile, “That wouldn’t be any more practical, and you wouldn’t want others to call me dar—­” Her fingers loosened around his neck, she drew her head back, and a singular expression passed over her face, which to any calmer observer than a lover would have seemed, however, to indicate more curiosity than jealousy.

“Who else does call you so?” she added earnestly.  “How many, for instance?”

Low’s reply was addressed not to her ear, but her lips.  She did not avoid it, but added, “And do you kiss them all like that?” Taking him by the shoulders, she held him a little way from her, and gazed at him from head to foot.  Then drawing him again to her embrace, she said, “I don’t care, at least no woman has kissed you like that.”  Happy, dazzled, and embarrassed, he was beginning to stammer the truthful protestation that rose to his lips, but she stopped him:  “No, don’t protest! say nothing!  Let me love you—­that is all.  It is enough.”  He would have caught her in his arms again, but she drew back.  “We are near the road,” she said quietly.  “Come!  You promised to show me where you camped.  Let us make the most of our holiday.  In an hour I must leave the woods.”

“But I shall accompany you, dearest.”

“No, I must go as I came—­alone.”

“But Nellie—­”

“I tell you no,” she said, with an almost harsh practical decision, incompatible with her previous abandonment.  “We might be seen together.”