"A penny for your thoughts," said she, after they had ridden in silence for a time, and were crossing a brook that looked like a rippling stream of silver in the moonlight.
"I was thinking," he replied, "of a night just like this four years ago, when I went home with you from that party at the Stillman's. It was an event in my life that set me thinking."
"And have you been thinking about it ever since?" she said, laughing. "If you have it must have been an important event."
"No," he answered quietly; "but if it had not been for that party, it is likely I should not have gone to the academy, and most likely I should not be escorting you home to-night."
"I do not quite understand you," said Liddy; and then, with an accent of tenderness in her voice: "Tell me why, Charlie?"
"I am afraid you will laugh at me if I do," he said.
"No," she replied, "I will not; why should I?"
"Well," he continued, "to be candid, I was rather ashamed of myself that evening, or at least ashamed of my clothes. Then you told me you were going to the academy, and for that reason mainly I wanted to go, so you see what resulted from my going to the party. I do not think father intended to send me, and he would not if I had not coaxed him. My first term there was not very pleasant for many reasons, and had I known all I was to encounter I think my courage would have failed me. I am glad now that it did not." He paused a moment and then continued in a lower tone: "Whatever good it has done me is all due to you."
No more was said on the subject, and as they rode along in silence, each was thinking of the curious web of emotions that was moulding their lives and making definite objects grow from intangible impulses. He was hardly conscious yet what a motive force in his plans Liddy was destined to be; and she was filled with a new and sweet consciousness of a woman's power to shape a man's plans in life. When her home was reached, and after he had assisted her to alight, they stood for a moment by the gate beneath the maples. No light was visible in the house; no sound of any nature was heard. The sharp outlines of the buildings were softened by the moonlight, and the bold formation of the Blue Hills, vague and indistinct. The near-by brook, as of yore, sparkled like silver coin, and the landscape was bathed in mellow light. As Liddy's face was turned toward him, a ray of moonshine fell upon it, and her eyes seemed to fill with a new tenderness. It was a time and place for loving thoughts and words, and what these two young hearts felt called upon to utter may be safely left to the reader's imagination.
When Manson drove away, he felt that the future was bright before him, and that life held new and wonderfully sweet possibilities. If he built a few air castles as he rode along in silence and alone, and if into them crept a fair girl's face and tender blue eyes, it was but natural. The magic sweetness of our first dreams of love come but once in their pure simplicity; and none ever afterward seem quite like them. We may strive to feel the same tender thrill; we may think the same thoughts and build the same fairy palaces, woven out of moonbeams and filled with the same divine illusions, but all in vain, for none can live life over.