He mused as he sat there, as he often did, and his mind took backward flight. They were young then, young man and woman; beyond childhood, but only by the slightest of measure—-only by a scant few years. They met so long ago, in a renowned municipality of the Midwest arrayed on the banks of a great river. It was Kansas City. On this evening two young girls were leaving a busily frequented pharmaceutical which housed a popular soda fountain and coffee shop that lured people of their age in droves, the most compelling attractant being a setting of small circular tables where between the hours of six and ten the young crowd gathered to talk and laugh and be with one another. I’m Jonathan Ashley, he said. And I’m Katrina Annaheim, she replied. Who is this girl? he queried to himself. Is she Roman, is she Indo-European, or is she Persian? He had read that young women of these lineages were the most beautiful in the world. She looked of European strain, her dark eyes absorbing and dazzling and dazzling even more as she moved slightly into the glow of street lights, They strolled the river’s shoreline that evening as the water glimmered from the overhanging moon and the city lights from the bluffs above, and threw pebbles and rocks as far as their strength would allow, tracing the ripples in chase of one another, the first pursued by the second, the second pursued by the third and so on until all faded into darkness. Katrina sent a cord of amusement high into the air—-bursting with jubilance as her echo resounded from the opposite shore. Such was their beginning, the kindling of a romance they thought would always be, but fate, as it sometimes strangely does, intervened, and theywent their separate ways. Said Jonathan of this once in his recollections, How could something so perfect fade into nothing, something so supposed to last forever? It was likened to a dream, a dream though which did not dissolve abruptly, as if a twig suddenly broken, but s