“Oh, fine!” smiled Barton.  “Fine!  Fine!  Fi—­” Abruptly the word broke in his throat.  “What?” he cried.  His hand—­the steadiest hand among all his chums—­began to shake like an aspen.  “What?” he cried.  His heart, the steadiest heart among all his chums, began to pitch and lurch in his breast.  “Why, Eve!  Eve!” he stammered.  “You don’t mean you like me—­like that?”

“Yes—­I do,” nodded the little white-capped head.  There was much shyness of flesh in the statement, but not a flicker of spiritual self-consciousness or fear.

“But—­Eve!” protested Barton.  Already he felt the goose-flesh rising on his arms.  Once before a girl had told him that she—­liked him.  In the middle of a silly summer flirtation it had been, and the scene had been mawkish, awful, a mess of tears and kisses and endless recriminations.  But this girl?  Before the utter simplicity of this girl’s statement, the unruffled dignity, the mere acknowledgment, as it were, of an interesting historical fact, all his trifling, preconceived ideas went tumbling down before his eyes like a flimsy house of cards.  Pang after pang of regret for the girl, of regret for himself, went surging hotly through him.  “Oh, but—­Eve!” he began all over again.  His voice was raw with misery.

“Why, there’s nothing to make a fuss about,” drawled little Eve Edgarton.  “You’ve probably liked a thousand people, but I—­you see?—­I’ve never had the fun of liking—­any one—­before!”

“Fun?” tortured Barton.  “Yes, that’s just it!  If you’d ever had the fun of liking anything it wouldn’t seem half so brutal—­now!”

“Brutal?” mused little Eve Edgarton.  “Oh, really, Mr. Jim Barton, I assure you,” she said, “there’s nothing brutal at all in my liking—­for you.”

With a gasp of despair Barton stumbled across the rug to the bed, and with a shaky hand thrust under Eve Edgarton’s chin, turned her little face bluntly up to him to tell her—­how proud he felt, but—­to tell her how sorry he was, but—­

[Illustration:  “Any time that you people want me,” suggested Edgarton’s icy voice, “I am standing here—­in about the middle of the floor!”]

And as he turned that little face up to his,—­inconceivably—­incomprehensively—­to his utter consternation and rout—­he saw that it was a stranger’s little face that he held.  Gone was the sullen frown, the indifferent glance, the bitter smile, and in that sudden, amazing, wild, sweet transfiguration of brow, eyes, mouth, that met his astonished eyes, he felt his whole mean, supercilious world slip out from under his feet!  And just as precipitously, just as inexplainably, as ten days before he had seen a Great Light that had knocked all consciousness out of him, he experienced now a second Great Light that knocked him back into the first full consciousness that he had ever known!

“Why, Eve!” he stammered.  “Why, you—­mischief!  Why, you little—­cheeky darling!  Why, my own—­darned little Story Book Girl!” And gathered her into his arms.