ock, and have you
changed me so? I told you that night I half thought--I was very sure--I
cared, and then I seemed to lose my power of mocking you. Our places
are changed. You do not know it, but I no longer command; I am
beginning, the real I that sits within me, to obey. Your ways are so
sweet, so tender, your truth so single, your chivalry so great! I am
learning to lean on your fair service as it were an arm. O, but if I am
to love you, make me good! I wish I were what you would have me be. I
am not! I am not! How soon will you learn it? They talk about a
maiden's mind, a fair white page; mine is all tracked with ugly marks.
I am blonde, young, pretty, but I am haggard and yellow within. Not
bad, you know, dear; but not the she you should have loved. Full of
worldliness, cynicism, incapacity for being deceived; there's not a
spontaneous thing about me. Yet, peradventure, my only hope is that I
see your beauty and love it. No more of this, so long as we two live.
Love me while you can, and believe it is my unhappiness that I have
lived too much.

[Sidenote: _Francis Hume to Zoe Montrose_]

My lady,--It was a perverse mood that conceived your letter. And if you
had no perversity, no pretty whims, where should we all be? On a dead
level of discontent. I love the sweet humility of it. Not that I would
have you keep to that; it would never befit my sovereign lady. But for
an idle moment of a summer's day, 'tis like fooling in masquerade. Why,
you are queen of me, and queen of my great heart! (Aye, I do swear with
the biggest oaths I know that 'tis a great heart; for otherwise were to
do you some despite. Did you not create it? "Let there be love," said
you, and straightway my heart was born.) Do people always take it so
seriously when other people say they are going to marry? What was that
unguarded speech of Mrs. Montrose's:--

"Zoe, Zoe, why didn't you let that boy alone?"

O, I heard it, but I forgive her! She wots not of our kingdom. What
should a woman with false hair and fat hands know about the divine
foreknowledge of a heart in finding its mate? And my father? Why is he
sadder every day? He has not lost me. He had gained you; and he owns
you are sweet and blithe and fair beyond compare.

Later: What do you think has happened? I am to go back with you, and my
father himself proposed it! I could wake all the echoes in the hills
with joy. I shall never walk any more. I shall run and dance. What will
your world