When he looked back to find his new acquaintance, her faithful wilderness had swallowed her up. Only the veery’s song, farther away and fainter; only the aeolian tones about him; only the feeling of vanished music and uncaptured song.

Fresh colors after rain now blended where she had been. And still he stood among them, gazing, trying to comprehend the treasure he had found. Thus the miner turns in his eager fingers the crystal that puzzles him, and calls it blende, the thing that deceives.

He had not asked her name. He had made a supreme discovery, and the name was unimportant.

For his predicament there are names enough, ancient and mostly unbelieved. We might say that he had fallen head over heels in love, except that she was not a butt of malmsey or a hollow tree full of honey. We might say that the minute she met him she pursed up his heart, except that she was not in the habit of carrying a purse. At first sight they had changed eyes, but what would that mean in terms of electricity?

To be soberly modern we might say that he had yielded as easily as zinc yields its electrons to copper, plating it round and defending it forever. But the trouble is that Marvin had forgotten all his chemistry.

There he stood, a man of lightning without one word of lightning at his command. There he stood, compounded of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, sodium, magnesium, silicon, phosphorus, sulphur, chlorine, potassium, calcium, iron, and iodine, and not one element had a characteristic thing to say.

But he was swiftly coming to a conclusion just the same. He was reaching the upshot of response. In five minutes he had the resultant in the homely words of old romance. He loved this girl. He would love her and cherish her till death did them part. No lapse of years, no cancer, no disfigurement would make her less dear.

He was in love and no mistake, and the first thing to do was to lock the lamp-house door.