We realized that it was a serious matter—a deadly serious matter; just as did a score or more of our fellows on the campus in whose hearts, as well, flared the flame of the fine young love that we were feeling in our own.
For you—and I—loved Florence.
Dear little room! Dearest, dearest Florence! Many are the men who never learned; in whose hearts your image is enshrined to-night. And few are they who ever learned and really knew you, dear.
Some few thought they did and called you a "College Widow," because they could remember a certain tall, dark-browed senior who danced ten times with you at the Jay Hop of '87. Others were convinced through them; but these were mostly freshmen upon whom you had not sought to work your magic. How far wrong they were! Yet even you, Florence, I am thinking, were wont, at least in blue moments, to take yourself at the scant valuation these few saw fit to place upon you.
But in the end you, even, saw and understood.
I am glad, my dear, that I may tell the story. And if those who read it here shall call it fiction, you, and Jim, and I, at least, shall know it for the truth.
And then, when I have done, and you have put aside the book, to hide your eyes from him who holds you fonder far than you can know, remember, dear, the glory of it and be glad.
I
It was June.
The rain had been plentiful and the green things of earth rioted joyously in their silent life. In the trees were many birds that sang all day long, and in the night the moon was pale and the shadows were ghostly and the air was sweet with roses that hung in pink profusion from the trellis.