Julia, enjoying the sunshine and the good hour, looked lazily at the curiously variegated types about them:  young men who lay almost horizontally in their seats, their eyes shut, newspapers blowing about their feet; toddling babies in Sunday white; young fathers and mothers with tiny coats laid across their laps; groups of middle-aged Teutons critically alert, and, everywhere, lovers and lovers and lovers.  Mark was pleasantly aware that his companion’s beauty made her conspicuous, even though Julia was plainly, almost soberly, dressed to-day, and showed none of her usual sparkle and flash.  She wore a trim little gown of blue serge, with a tiny white ruffle about its high collar for its only relief, her gloves were black, her small hat black, and she wore no rings, no chains, and no bangles, a startling innovation for Julia.  The change in her appearance, and some more subtle change in face and voice and manner, affected Mark like a strong wine.

“Do you know you’re different from what you uster be, Julie?” he said, laying his arm about her shoulders, on the back of the bench, and squaring about so that his handsome black eyes could devour her.

“Getting older, maybe,” Julia smiled indifferently.  “I’ll be sixteen in no time, now!”

“My mother was only fifteen when she was married,” Mark said, in a deep and shaken voice, yet with pride and laughter in his eyes.  Julia flushed and looked at the toe of her shoe.

“Well, what about it—­eh?” Mark pursued in an eager undertone.  Julia was silent.  “What about it?” he said again.

“Why—­why, I don’t know,” Julia stammered, uncomfortably, with a nervous and furtive glance about her; anywhere but at his face.

“Suppose I do know?” he urged, tightening a little the arm that layabout her.  “Suppose I know for us both?”

Julia straightened herself suddenly, evading the encircling arm.

“Don’t, Mark!” she pleaded, giving him a glimpse of wet blue eyes.

“I’m not teasing you, darling,” he said tenderly.  “I’m not going to tease you!  But you do love me, Julia?”

A silence, but she tightened the hold of the little glove that rested on his free hand.

“Don’t you, Julie?” he begged.

“Why—­you know I do, Mark!” the girl said, and both began to laugh.

“But then what’s the matter?” Mark asked, serious again.

“Well—­” Julia looked all about her, and finally brought her troubled eyes to rest on his.

“Well, what, you darling?”

“Well, it’s just this, Mark.  I don’t know whether I can get it over to you.”  The girl interrupted herself for a little puzzled laugh.  “I don’t know that I can get it over to myself,” she said.  “But it’s this:  I feel as if I didn’t know myself yet, d’ye see?  I don’t know what I want, myself, and of course I don’t know what I want my husband to be like—­d’ye see, Mark?  I—­I feel as if I didn’t know anything—­I don’t know what’s good and what’s just common.  I haven’t read books, I haven’t had any one to tell me things, and show me things!” She turned to him eyes that he was amazed to see were brimming again.  “My mother never told me about things,” she burst out incoherently, “about how to talk, and taking baths—­and not using cologne!”