, and _you_ are the
artist--" He broke off here and shrugged. "No, I could hardly make you
understand. It doesn't matter. It is enough that I have bartered youth
and happiness and the very power of living for the privilege of grubbing
in old county records."

He paused. It is debatable if he had spoken wisely, or had spoken even
in consonance with fact, but his outburst had, at least, the saving
grace of sincerity. He was pallid now, shaking in every limb, and in his
heart was a dull aching. She seemed so incredibly soft and little and
childlike, as she looked up at him with troubled eyes.

"I--I don't quite understand," she murmured. "It isn't as if you were an
old man, Olaf. It isn't as if--"

But he had scarcely heard her. "Ah, child, child!" he cried, "why did
you come to waken me? I was content in my smug vanities. I was content
in my ignorance. I could have gone on contentedly grubbing through my
musty, sleepy life here, till death had taken me, if only you had not
shown me what life might mean! Ah, child, child, why did you waken me?"

"I?" she breathed; and now the flush of her cheeks had widened,
wondrously.

"You! you!" he cried, and gave a wringing motion of his hands, for the
self-esteem of a complacent man is not torn away without agony. "Who
else but you? I had thought myself brave enough to be silent, but still
I must play the coward's part! That woman I told you of--that woman I
loved--was you! Yes, you, you!" he cried, again and again, in a sort of
frenzy.

And then, on a sudden, Colonel Musgrave began to laugh.

"It is very ridiculous, isn't it?" he demanded of her. "Yes, it is
very--very funny. Now comes the time to laugh at me! Now comes the time
to lift your brows, and to make keen arrows of your eyes, and of your
tongue a little red dagger! I have dreamed of this moment many and many
a time. So laugh, I say! Laugh, for I have told you that I love you. You
are rich, and I am a pauper--you are young, and I am old, remember,--and
I love you, who love another man! For the love of God, laugh at me and
have done--laugh! for, as God lives, it is the bravest jest I have ever
known!"

But she came to him, with a wonderful gesture of compassion, and caught
his great, shapely hands in hers.

"I--I knew you cared," she breathed. "I have always known you cared. I
would have been an idiot if I hadn't. But, oh, Olaf, I didn't know you
cared so much. You frighten me, Olaf," she pleaded, and raised a tea