For a very long time I was quite at a loss to determine whether it was the red of her hair or the lips of her large and interesting mouth which caused me to love Nance Gwyn. Even to this day, as a lover of long standing, I am not always certain that I know the whys and wherefores of such an inconsistent mixture of passion and tenderness. There have been moments, such as when a wild whisp of it would come taunting my face with its soft caresses, or when my hands inadvertently must need touch it for a seemingly timeless instant, that I was very sure, as sure as I knew for some reason I loved her with all of my life, that it was her hair. Of one thing I have always been confident: I could never have loved a woman whose hair was other than the color of Nance's.

Of course there were times when I thought it was for other things than the hair and the lips. Her feet, for example, when I came upon her wading in the Middleton's brook. This hurrying little stream ran through the heart of a small woodland pasture near town. It was in a leafy hollow and its course was over great flat rocks with occasionally sandy-bottomed pools worn by the fall of water. The place was a favorite summer-time haunt of the old days. It was cool, inviting, and dim with an abundance of fern, green moss, and tiny wild violets.

Now, in the first place, how was I to know Miss Nance Gwyn had sauntered down there in the middle of the afternoon? About five o'clock I came in, tired and hot, from a long drive to the country. So soon as I found no calls waiting for me, I thought of the pool in the Middleton's woods. Just before climbing the fence which would bring my destination into view, I heard one of Jean FranÇois' songs, but coming from the throat of the adorable Nance:

I shall steal upon her and surprise her, I thought. So I crept silently over the fence, stepped around a tree, and how should I know with what my eyes were to be greeted?

There she sat like a nymph upon a ledge of projecting rock, idly dabbling her feet in the shallow water of the pool. But that was not all. Her dress was gathered from beneath her and slightly raised above her knees, disclosing some very frilly, lacy lingerie. I stood as one dumbfounded. I did not know whether to run and doubtless get caught in my hurrying away, or to take it as a matter of course, boldly facing it out. While I was arriving at a decision she raised the slenderest, whitest, most adorable pink-soled foot it would be possible for any woman to possess, with dainty air from the water, bringing her knee beneath her chin, and placed her heel upon the rock upon which she sat. Then she reached behind her for a pair of flimsy silk stockings and some slippers. Never before or since have I seen a picture at once so innocent and yet so seductively beautiful.

All of this took place, you must understand, in a very few seconds. Just here, however, when I was preparing for as hasty and as silent a retreat as possible, she involuntarily raised her face and caught me full in the eyes.

"Hello, Nance," said I, careless like, as I came forward, "been wading?"

"Wading," she replied, hastily standing, with a look of mingled dismay and anger upon her face. "As for you, Mr. King, I think you had better go!"

"Nance," I began.

"Go!... Did you hear me? I say, go!" she exclaimed, trembling, her cheeks becoming sickly white.

I went precipitately and as I hurried to town I gave myself such a lecture as a man ever got. Yet, in spite of my reproach for an unfortunate incident which happened very innocently, I could not keep from my mind that I was now very sure of another reason why I loved her.