IV

October had come. Sophy and Morris Loring were walking together towards

the woods that lay along the hills behind Sweet-Waters. He had ridden

over from the Macfarlanes' and was to stay to dinner. Bobby trotted

soberly by his mother, his mittened hand in hers. He was a reticent

child about his deepest feelings. One of these feelings was that he did

not like Loring. As he had said of the Deity in His form of _Jupiter

tonans_ so he said in his heart of Loring: "_El pias minga a mi._" Bobby

thought in the Lake dialect. It was his medium of intercourse with Rosa.

He did not know why he did not like Loring. The young man was

particularly nice to him--or tried to be. Children are peculiar. What

seems "being nice" to grown-ups, does not always appeal to them by any

means. For one thing, Loring always addressed him as "General." This

soldierly epithet would have pleased some little boys. It did not please

Bobby. He preferred to be called by his own name. Doubtless jealousy had

something to do with his dislike of Loring. Until the young man had

appeared in the neighbourhood, Bobby had had his mother almost entirely

to himself. Now "Mr. Lorwing," like the world in the great sonnet, was

too much with them. He even intruded on the hours heretofore sacred to

Bobby--firelight hours just before bedtime, when "Muvvah" used to tell

such lovely fairy tales: hours like this one, in which Bobby had looked

forward to gathering the first chestnuts of the season--just he and

"Muvvah," with Rosa to throw sticks into the big trees for them. So

Bobby trotted along in sober silence, wishing that something would

happen to make Mr. Lorwing go away forever.

Rosa walked happily in the rear, gathering a great posy of autumn

flowers.

The afternoon was lovely--mild yet sparkling. The blue autumnal haze

veiled everything. The sky was almost purple. Against it melted clouds

of silverish azure. Just over the yellowing wood hung a frail day-moon.

"What a blue day!" said Sophy, looking up at the fragile disk. "Even the

moon is blue--it looks as if it were made of thin blue crystal...."

Loring was looking at her.

"That's a good omen--a 'blue moon,'" he said. "All sorts of wonders

happen in a 'blue moon.'"

"Well, we might find a blue rose," said Sophy, smiling.

"I've found one."

"Ah! Shall you press it or preserve it in spirits?"

"Blue roses don't fade."

Sophy answered flippantly that in that case he would always be provided

with a unique and inexpensive "button-hole"--much more unique and

economical than Mr. Chamberlain's orchid.

Loring was still looking at her. She did not look at him, but kept

glancing about her at the October landscape that she loved best of all.

"It seems queer that you're so contented in this quiet old place after

having led such a brilliant life abroad," he said. This strain of

thought had been roused in him by the mention of Mr. Chamberlain's

orchid. "I should think you'd long for it again."

"Not yet," said Sophy.

His face lighted.

"'Not yet'? Then you do feel sometimes that this buried-alive-life won't

satisfy you forever?"

"Oh, no! I shall fly far and wide again some day."

Loring was silent. His heart gave a hot twist. This was just what he

most feared, that she would "fly far and wide" away from him. He had

never in all his exceedingly wilful life desired anything with the

frantic vehemence that he desired Sophy. And he was not accustomed to

having his desires denied him. At home the household word was: "Morry

has such a strong will." This had been the slogan of his childhood: "My

will--or nothing. My will--or a burst blood-vessel. Death or punishment

in any form--rather than yield my will." He had been rather delicate as

a child. So his parents had preferred concession to the convulsions with

which he threatened them whenever he was crossed in any way. It was a

wonder that he grew up to likable manhood. Yet people thought him

"perfectly charming"--a bit spoiled, but delightful. Girls called him

"fascinating." His own pals said: "Morry Loring's a good sort. A bit

ugly if you cross him--you've got to know how to handle him; but he's

all right." By "handling" Loring they meant that one must seem to give

him his way while skilfully getting one's own. This was not always

practicable. Then coolnesses sprang up. Only two out of the old Harvard

set stuck to him. But he was, in fact, not at all a bad sort--provided

that you were willing not to announce too positively and publicly that

your soul was your own. And his will was certainly strong. It was a

brand-new sensation for him to will so ardently the possession of a

thing which he was in sick doubt of securing. It had a poignant yet

terrible charm of sheer novelty. And at the same time he experienced an

inner revelation which shook him even more. It was the undreamed of

capacity for adoration. There was no denying it--his spirit was on its

knees to Sophy. She seemed to him as beautifully overwhelming as the

suddenly revealed goddess to the shepherd of Mount Ida. There was about

her, in addition to the aura of beauty and talent, the glamour of a

woman who has moved brilliantly in a brilliant world. Had he been told

that this naif snobbishness had much to do with his novel emotion of

adoration, he would have received the information with a tempest of

incredulous and outraged wrath. Yet, though undoubtedly due to it in

part, there was also genuine humility in his love for Sophy--that

romantic abasement of self which makes a man find a subtle pleasure in

the realisation of his own unworthiness.

Loring had come down to Aleck Macfarlane's country place to buy hunters.

When he saw Sophy, he believed suddenly in Fate. No mere chance wish to

buy hunters had sent him to Virginia. Here was the Lady of Legend--the

Princess out of the fairy-tale books of his boyhood. He had always heard

of Virginia as romantic. Now he found that it was inhabited by Romance

herself in the person of Sophy Chesney. He had heard often of the Hon.

Mrs. Cecil Chesney. He knew that she "had written something." Poems were

not much "in his line." Yet he sent to Brentano's for Sophy's poems the

day after he met her. He was frankly disappointed in them. He had

expected something more fiery. And he tried to get a volume of her first

book, _The Shadow of a Flame_. But it was out of print. He had given

Brentano an order to find it for him. Only that morning the book had

arrived from England. He was still tingling with the fearless, young

passion of her printed words, as he walked now beside her. Her own words

seemed to put him from her--far back with that past self which she no

longer was, and which he craved to have her be again. And how young she

looked ... what a girl! It was absurd, vexatious, incredible, impossible

that so keen a flame should have died down into the white ash of

philosophy ... as expressed in her latest poems.

"A penny...." said Sophy.

His long silence disturbed her. He gazed down at her, his bold eyes

softening.

"I was thinking that you looked about nineteen, with that black bow on

your hair," he said.

"And you say that as if you were about ten," she retorted, laughing.

"I don't feel ten."

"And I don't feel nineteen."

"Yet you're really not quite old enough to be so devilish motherly with

me." His tone was quite pettish.

She was teasing him on purpose. She had found out at once that he was

badly spoilt. It pleased her to see him wince, and flush, helpless

under her amiable elderliness. She liked him very much, but she didn't

want any love-making, though she didn't mind his being so evidently in

love with her. She thought that a "disappointment in love" might do him

no end of good--teach him that he couldn't "swing the earth a trinket at

his wrist"--avenge some of the many young women with whom she felt sure

that he had flirted outrageously. One wasn't given a Greek head, many

millions, and an exaggerated sense of one's Ego, in order that one might

practise the homelier virtues, such as unselfishness.

At his "devilish motherly" she laughed out--her ringing, contralto

laugh, that was so delicious and that made him want to shake her and to

kiss her violently, at one and the same time.

"'Devilish motherly'...." she repeated. "I'm sorry I remind you of

Medea--she's the only person I can think of who was 'devilish motherly'

..."

Before Loring could reply, Bobby's voice broke in, austere and haughty.

"My muvvah is _not_ deviliss," he said.

Loring went round beside him.

"Bully for you, General!" he exclaimed. "You'd fight a duel with me this

minute, if you could--wouldn't you?"

Bobby pressed close to Sophy. He refused to yield Loring his other hand.

"Please go away," he said coldly. "I don't want you."

"Well ... your 'muvvah' don't want me either."

"No. She wants me," said Bobby.

He looked up at Sophy, his chin quivering. He resented Loring's

imitation of the way that he pronounced "mother."

"Don't you?" he appealed to her.

She stooped to him.

"More than anything in the whole, round world or the blue sky," she

reassured him. He smiled to feel her lips on his cheek. Close in her ear

he whispered:

"We don't want _him_, do we? Make him go away."

"No. We must always be polite," she whispered back.

He sighed deeply.

"It's awful hard being p'lite," he mourned. "Mos' as hard as being

good."

They all walked on in silence for a few moments.

Then Bobby said, with what Sophy called his "inspirational look":

"God ain't p'lite, Muvvah."

"Hello!" laughed Loring.

"Sssh!" said Sophy, flashing him a vexed look.

"Why, darling?" she asked her son.

"'Cause ev'y night I talks and talks to God, an' He never even says,

'Mh-Mh, Bobby.' Vat ain't p'lite--are it?"

Loring strode on ahead to have his laugh out. He thought Bobby the

"funniest little beggar" in the world. She was always scolding him for

laughing at the boy out of season.

"Children and dogs hate being laughed at," she now told him. "Didn't

_you_ hate being laughed at when you were little?"

"Can't remember," said Loring. "I suppose so. But as for that, men don't

like being laughed at either."

"_You_ don't, I know. But it's very good for you."

"Why isn't it good for the General?"

"My name's Bobby," came the small but haughty voice. At times her son

reminded Sophy strikingly of Cecil. This was just Cecil's tone with

presuming strangers.

"Very well, Bobby--do _you_ know why it's good for me to be laughed at,

but not for you?"

"I don't fink it matters," said Chesney's son, again in exactly the tone

that Chesney would have used. Sophy felt too awed to feel amused. She

felt that with the law of continuance thus powerful, death, in one

sense, ceased to exist.

"You don't like me, do you, Bobby?" asked Loring, looking queerly at the

child.

"Not much--p'ease to 'scuse me," replied Bobby.

"Funny little tot you are," said Loring, rather hurt. Then, to his

surprise, he suddenly realised that he on his side, didn't really like

Bobby. It seemed as if the child came wilfully between him and Sophy. He

walked on moodily, cutting with his riding-crop at the pyred flames of

golden-rod, his handsome, short-lipped mouth very sullen.

"What's the matter?" asked Sophy, to break another too long silence.

"You look like a tinted marble of Endymion in the sulks."

Loring turned on her passionately.

"Mrs. Chesney," said he, "would you mind letting up on my rotten

appearance! It isn't my fault that I've got a nose like a damned

statue's!"

His face was scarlet. Sophy put her hands up to her own face to temper

the brutality of her wild mirth.

V

But this laughter of Sophy was so winsome, as she glanced at him through

her shielding fingers, that Loring gave way and began to laugh himself.

This was another new sensation for him--the joining in a laugh against

himself.

"I'm a frightful ass, I know, to mind so much when you tease me," he

said as they walked on. "But you make me feel such a fool--such a

'pretty fellow'...."

"You _are_ a pretty fellow," murmured Sophy. "When you get red with

anger like that you're quite dazzling."

"Oh, I say! Don't you think you're a bit _too_ hard on me?" Loring

protested.

He still writhed inwardly. It is acute agony to six and twenty to be

made fun of by the object of its adoration.

Bobby's voice piped in again.

"_I_ don't fink you're pretty," he remarked.

"Thanks, old chap," said Loring, this time without laughter.

They had reached the woods, on whose edge stood the big chestnuts, all

one-sided from the reaching of their branches towards the free sunlight

of the open. Behind them stretched the forest, a glitter of trembling

yellow, shot with the velvet black of twigs and stems. Here and there a

bough of maple fluttered as with swarms of scarlet butterflies. Above

the leathern carpet of last year's leaves shone the lilac disks of

autumn asters, and the brown, bee-like heads of self-heal, set with

tiny, purple trumpets. The chestnuts were thick with greenish-brown

burs.

"I see 'em! I see 'em!" Bobby cried, dancing gleefully, and making a

noiseless clapping with mittened hands. For a moment the sight of the

clustered burs among the pointed, russet leaves had made him forget his

Kill-joy, Loring.

"_Oh! Che splendore!_" cried Rosa, running up.

She and Loring threw sticks among the laden branches. The nuts came down

with pleasant _swups_ upon the smooth, thick mat of dead leaves.

It was charming to kneel there in the warm October sunlight, at the edge

of the rustling wood, pounding away the prickly hulls from the brown,

smooth chestnuts. A fresh, pleasant scent rose from the bruised hulls.

The breath of the autumn wood was keenly sweet. It smelt of wild grapes

and mushrooms. From a field close by stole the odour of pumpkins that

had been lying in the sun all day. And this mingled fragrance, so

deliciously of the earth earthy, seemed just the perfume that would be

shaken from October's russet smock as he strode across the land.

Sophy stood up at last. She lifted her arms in a boyish stretch, and

stamped her feet which had "pins and needles" in them from crouching so

long. Her big, clubbed plait had been somewhat loosened by her vigorous

pounding. Leaves and withered grasses clung to her short, cord skirt. As

she stood there stretching her cramped limbs, and laughing nervously as

her feet "woke up" again, with the light wind frowzing the loose strands

of hair about her face, and her short skirt disclosing her ankles in

their tight-laced, brown shooting-boots, she certainly looked quite

young enough, and girlish enough, to be Loring's sweetheart rather than

Bobby's mother.

And Loring was thinking vehemently, his hands clenched on the chestnuts

in his pockets:

"She's _got_ to love me.... I'll _make_ her love me.... I'll _make_ her

marry me.... I will.... I will!"

"Ouf!" said Sophy, letting her arms drop. "That was delicious! And what

are you so fiercely determined over? You look ... but I won't say what

you look like----"

"No ... don't, please," replied Loring shortly.

He turned away to help Rosa adjust the top of her hamper, which would

not fit into place over the hard, round chestnuts.

It was beautifully still. The western sky was beginning to redden. A

crisp rustling came from the shocks of Indian corn in a near field.

"It must be after five ... time for my Bobbikins to be trotting home,"

said Sophy, taking his sober face between her hands and crumpling it

together like a soft flower. Then she laughed and kissed the crumpled

flower of the little face.

"_Ho-o-o-g! Ho-o-o-g!_" came the long-drawn, minor wail of a negro-voice

calling the swine from the mountain for their evening feed.

Rosa went off down the hill, with Bobby trotting at her side. Once the

little fellow looked back--only once. His dignity forbade that he should

be thought regretful. And "Muvvah" had promised to come and roast

chestnuts for him before his bedtime.

"Now for a brisk walk!" said Sophy. "Let's strike into the woods at

random and go a little way up the mountain--not far--I must be back to

roast those chestnuts before Bobby's bedtime."

"You never break your word to him, do you?" said Loring, as they plunged

into the golden depths that seemed aglow with stored sunlight.

"No. Never. I'd rather break my word to ten grown-ups than to one

child."

They went on in silence for some yards, the dried leaves ruffling almost

to their knees in places. Then Loring said:

"If you once gave your word you wouldn't break it to child or grown-up."

"I don't know.... I've never been tested."

"I know."

"Thanks. But you shouldn't get into the habit of idealising people.

You'll end as a cynic if you do."

Her tone was pleasantly mocking.

Loring said quietly:

"I've never idealised but one person in my life."

"Well ... perhaps that's being a little _too_ cautious."

"Caution has nothing to do with it. Such things come or they don't

come."

"Yes ... perhaps they do. Ah! Wild grapes! What beauties!"

She stood gazing up at the little clusters of purple-black fox-grapes

that hung against the arch of yellow leaves overhead. The vine had swung

itself in great loops about a dogwood tree. The grapes were like a

delicate design of wrought iron work against the gilded background of

autumn leaves. But they hung high--out of reach. Loring caught at them

with the handle of his riding-crop. Some of the ripe, purplish beads

pattered about them.

"No--no! You can't get them that way," said Sophy. "They're too ripe."

"Wait.... I'll have a go for them this way," said Loring.

He grasped a bough of the tree in either hand, shook it to assure

himself that it was equal to his weight, then swung himself up into its

crotch. By standing with an arm about the main stem, he could reach the

bunches easily on either side. Sophy held out the lap of her skirt.

"You _are_ a nice playmate!" she called up to him, smiling.

He tossed down bunch after bunch from where he stood. Then, seating

himself sideways on one of the larger boughs, gathered all that were

within reach. His bare head, with its clustered, red-brown hair, looked

quite wonderful in the setting of golden leaves and iron-blue grapes.

"Forgive me...." said Sophy. "But I _must_ tell you.... You look like

the young Dionysus--with those bunches of grapes hanging all about you."

"Well, that's odd," said Loring; "but from here you look to me like

Ariadne." He thanked the gods that he had not forgotten all his

mythology. "I ask nothing better than to give you a crown of stars. I

believe that's what Dionysus gave Ariadne ... when she became his wife."

Sophy laughed.

"You dear boy," said she. "That was very quick of you. And I like you

for conquering your evil temper so nicely. You never had a sister, had

you?"

"Why! Are you thinking of offering to be a sister to me?"

"Not at all. I was only thinking that you wouldn't be so 'techess,' as

the darkies say, if you'd had a nice, blunt sister to tease you when you

were young--that is, younger than you are now," she ended cruelly.

Loring swung himself down beside her.

"The atrocious crime of being a young man!" he said, looking into her

eyes boldly and somewhat mockingly, in his turn. "It seems hard for you

to forgive me that."

Sophy was a trifle disconcerted.

"You are so easy to tease ... it's a temptation," she said rather

lamely.

Loring replied with apparent irrelevance.

"I believe the Brownings are the accepted standard of married bliss,

aren't they?"

"Why--yes--I believe they are," admitted Sophy.

"Very well. And do you happen to remember that Elizabeth Barrett was

some years older than Robert Browning!"

Sophy was annoyed to feel herself colouring.

"Yes, I know that," she said coldly.

Loring kept his eyes on her. She was eating the little fox flavoured

grapes as she walked beside him--very deliberately, one at a time.

"What I find so peculiarly interesting about it," continued Loring, his

voice shaken, his heart racing, "is that the difference in their ages

was even more than the difference in ours."

Sophy threw aside the bunch of grapes with an impetuous movement. She

turned, looking him full in the face. She was very pale now and her eyes

shone black. She had not foreseen any such sudden climax as all this.

"Don't ... don't spoil it...." she said vehemently, "don't spoil our

pleasant friendship.... I beg of you not to do it."

They stood facing each other, shut alone into the great gold temple of

the woods. Loring's beautiful bold eyes were black also. He, too, was

white. The pent up passion of his worshipping love for her, that had all

the unreasoning fire of a convert's fanaticism, burnt his lips with

words. He had not meant to speak. Five minutes ago nothing had been

further from his thoughts than the outburst, which now shook him with

its violent suddenness.

"You can't stem the high tide with a straw...." he said low and

breathless. "Do what you will with me.... I love you.... I more than

love you.... I worship you.... I adore you.... Break me if you like....

Snap my life in two.... Throw away the broken bits.... But I worship

you.... I worship you!"

He dropped suddenly to his knee on the brown leaves; caught the hem of

her clay-stained skirt to his lips. He was past all self-consciousness.

He had no dread of seeming ridiculous. Indeed it did not occur to him

that he could be ridiculous. Young love has no sense of humour. His

white, intense face looked up at her amazingly beautiful--the face of a

wood-god kindled with awed passion for some skyey deity. And this sheer

beauty of his kept Sophy also from seeing anything absurd in his

kneeling there to kiss the soiled hem of her skirt. Supreme beauty, like

supreme love, is never ridiculous. The gods wept over Icarus tumbling

from his sire's chariot in mid-heaven. They would have tittered had it

been lame Vulcan sprawling after his whirling hammer through the gulfs

of ether. In the few seconds that Sophy stood transfixed, gazing down

into that exalted young face, she understood how the legend of the

moon's white stoop to Endymion had been invented. Not imagination so

much as material beauty had been the source of the Greek myths. The

artist and the poet in her ranged themselves on Loring's side. Her first

impulse of anger was replaced by a sad tenderness. She forgot the Morris

Loring of everyday in this Endymion of a moment. She forgot even that

she had called him like Endymion "in the sulks" only a short while ago.

This youth, with the white flame of worship quivering up from his

heart's altar and lighting the antique mask of his ardent face--with his

awed, yet eager eyes burning upon hers--this was a different thing--one

quite new to her. She was startled by the throe of pitiful regret that

seized her. If only she had been different herself ... a young virgin

ready to receive this outpouring of virginal love.... What miracles

would have enfolded them ... what wonders of dawn-time ecstasy. She had

been mistaken. A face so beautiful could be only the symbol of a lovely

soul. And this soul was gazing at her from the timid passion of the dark

eyes, no longer bold, but infinitely, touchingly imploring. In

continuous, swift flashes, like the luminous particles from radium,

these thoughts showered from her mind, as she stood gazing down at him.

"I've heard of it.... I never believed.... Now I believe..." he was

stammering. "My soul's in your body.... Your beautiful body is more than

any soul to me.... I pray to you.... My soul in you prays to you...." He

caught up a bit of leafy clay that had adhered to her foot, and pressed

that also to his lips. "See...." he stammered on, "the dirt from your

shoe.... That's how I love you...."

And even this act did not make him seem ridiculous. But Sophy caught his

wrist, holding back his hand from his lips that trembled into a white,

half-smile.

"My dear...." she said, her own voice shaken. "My dear boy....

Please...."

She felt her words very stupid--inane.

"Come...." she said, pulling at the strong wrist to make him regain his

feet. He yielded to her touch and rose, standing tall and quivering

before her.

"Won't you even let me worship you?" he asked in a smothered voice.

"My dear, no ... be reasonable...."

It seemed to Sophy that she had never been at the mercy of such

banalities as her mind now offered.

He stared, his lip curling.

"Reasonable!"

"I mean...." Fitting words would _not_ come to her. "You forget...." she

said confusedly.

"What ... what do I forget?"

"My life ... what is past.... My life is over ... that part of life...."

"_Your_ life?... _Over?_..." He gazed at her so that her eyes wavered

from his. She could not help this. It distressed her to be standing

there before him in her short skirt, bare-headed, with eyes that would

not keep steady. She felt that he had the advantage of her out there in

those wide, still aisles of gold with their groining of dark branches.

It was as if he had her far from home, in his own haunts. The glowing

forest sustained him, gave him his natural setting. He stood there

facing her, the young wood-god in his own domain. She felt a droll

almost hysteric yearning for trailing skirts, and the dignified refuge

of an armchair. That absurdly girlish bow of black ribbon seemed to burn

her neck. She knew that she looked incongruously young for the soul that

inhabited her. She made a desperate grasp at dignity of voice. Her cold

tone should be her trailing garment--make him realise the distance that

was spiritually between them. When she spoke it was in a steady voice.

"My life--as regards love--is over, because I have come to a place in it

where I do not even wish love," she said icily. A banal quotation

slipped from her before she could stop it. "'_Ich habe geliebt und

geleben_,'" she said, vexed at the crass ordinariness of the words as

they struck her ear.

There was silence. A squirrel dropped a nut through the still, flaky

gold of lapping leaves--then chittered angrily at its own awkwardness.

Loring said at last in a strangled voice:

"I am jealous of that dead man."

Sophy whitened.

"Don't say such things to me," burst from her in a sharp whisper.

"Have I hurt you?" he whispered back. "I'd die for you ... have I hurt

you? Did you love him so much as that? Are you really dead ... with

him?"

"Yes."

Another silence. Then the wilful, passionate young voice broke out

again:

"No! you are not dead ... you are not dead! You are only sleeping...."

Sophy started as though from a sort of sleep.

"We must go," she said. "I'd forgotten...."

She turned and began walking rapidly away from him.

He caught her up in a stride.

"You break my life like a rotten twig," he said. "And go to roast

chestnuts for your son."

The anguish of bitterness in his voice kept his words from absurdity.

"Don't say such things ... don't say such things," Sophy murmured,

walking faster and faster. He kept beside her, implacable in the

smarting novelty of defeated love and will.

"Your face is so beautiful and gentle.... Who would have thought you

could be so hard ... like flint?"

"I am not hard.... I only tell you the bare truth to save you pain."

"You can't save me pain. Why do you throw me these mouldy crusts of old

sayings? I offer you the best of me.... Don't you even think me worth a

word out of your heart?"

Sophy paused. Her heart gushed pity--and regret.

"Oh, my dear...." she said lamentably, looking up at him with frank

pain. "Why do you want to make it so hard for us both?"

"Then ... it is hard ... a little ... for you, too? I mean ... it hurts

you to hurt me so?"

"Yes, yes, it hurts me! Do you think I am made of stone? Do you think I

like seeing you suffer?"

"Then...." his throat closed on the words he wanted to say. He was

ignominiously near to tears. Chokily he got it out:

"Then ... don't send me away ... just because ... I love you. Let me

stay near you.... It can't hurt you ... and it's life to me."

"No, no. That would be horribly wrong of me--utterly, hatefully

selfish."

He caught at this.

"You'd like to have me? You've called me a good 'playmate,' you know. I

won't bore you with--with"--he gulped--"this craziness of mine.... If

I'm 'good' ... you'll let me stay on?"

"Oh, it's all wrong! It's all wrong, my dear!" said Sophy, quite

desperately. "You should go away at once. This is all just a phase ...

just a passing...."

"Please," said Loring, with real dignity.

Sophy felt very unhappy. She knew that she was doing wrong to temporise.

Yet that cruel kindness of the tender-hearted made her hesitate. She

could not bear to banish him all at once in this harsh way.

"Well ... for a little while...." she murmured weakly. "But it would be

much better for you to...."

"Please," said Loring again. "Allow me to judge of what will be best for

me."

"I ought not to," she said miserably. The whole scene had unnerved

her--jarred the fine, secure monotony of the life that she had thought

so firmly established. One cannot stand face to face with genuine love

without feeling a stir in chords long dumb. Loring's young, idealising

passion had set certain strings in Sophy's nature vibrating. It gave her

that sensation of aching melancholy with which we listen to the faint

notes of an old piano that was rich and mellow in our youth. It made her

feel very lonely. She had not once felt lonely since coming home--not

once in these calmly joyous years of mental renewal. Restlessness she

had known of late, but never loneliness. Now she felt all drooping with

the solitude of her own spirit as she walked homeward beside Loring. The

soft, dun red of the autumn sky seemed to her like the quiet, sombre

glow of her own life that had no more flame to give forth, that had sunk

into steady embers, that would presently resolve itself into the white

ash of old age. Yet it was wonderful to be loved again--even though she

had no love to give in return. It was movingly wonderful--though awful

in a way--to feel this tonic answering of slack chords to the full,

resonant notes struck from the blazing lyre of youth....