world at all.

Besides, I had just then (again if I remember rightfully) fallen in
love.

Not that it was the first time. Oh, no, not at eighteen, when at
thirteen I had begun confidently and happily to look for it! What a
sentimental little piece I was! How could they have been so patient
with me--Father, Mother, everybody!

I think the first real attack--the first that I consciously
called love, myself--was the winter after we had all come back to
Andersonville to live. I was sixteen and in the high school.

It was Paul Mayhew--yes, the same Paul Mayhew that had defied his
mother and sister and walked home with me one night and invited me to
go for an automobile ride, only to be sent sharply about his business
by my stern, inexorable Aunt Jane. Paul was in the senior class now,
and the handsomest, most admired boy in school. He didn't care for
girls. That is, he said he didn't. He bore himself with a supreme
indifference that was maddening, and that took (apparently) no notice
of the fact that every girl in school was a willing slave to the mere
nodding of his head or the beckoning of his hand.

This was the condition of things when I entered school that fall,
and perhaps for a week thereafter. Then one day, very suddenly, and
without apparent reason, he awoke to the fact of my existence. Candy,
flowers, books--some one of these he brought to me every morning. All
during the school day he was my devoted gallant, dancing attendance
every possible minute outside of session hours, and walking home with