of Being,
In the deep crypts of Self fordone he lay,
Quite cast away.
--_Adventures in Egoism_.

Every morning, now, a box of flowers went up to Elizabeth, at the house
with the white columns; and every evening Mr. Amidon bravely followed.
The terror he felt of women was overpowered by the greater terror of
losing this woman, and the fortitude and resolution he possessed in all
other fields of action were returning to him. His violets and
carnations she always wore for him, and all the roses except the red
ones, which she put in vases and kept near her, but did not wear. She
was ineffably kind and sweet, in a high and pure and far-off way fit
for Olympus, but all the intimate little coquetries and tricks of charm
with which she had at first received and disconcerted him were gone.
She talked to him in that low voice of hers, but oftener she sat
silent, and seemed to desire him to talk to her.

Since that first night, he could not bring himself to act a part,
further than to assume the name and place of Eugene Brassfield. He
stood afar off, looked at his divinity and worshiped. He read to her
her favorite books, and ventured somewhat, out of his exceptional
knowledge, to expound them--whereat she looked away and listened with
something of the astonishment with which she had received his
disquisitions on poetry and art on that first unlucky evening. For the
most part, however, he, too, was inclined to silences, in which he
looked at Elizabeth in the happiness of a lover's wretchedness. The
love she had given to Brassfield seemed to him based on the deceitful
pretensions of that wretch, and in any case it was not his, and he felt
repelled from accepting it. He yearned to show her the soul of Florian
Amidon, purified, adorned, and dedicated to her.

Once or twice she had hinted at something fateful which she wanted to
say to him; but he had begged her to wait. After a few days of this
slavish devotion of his, she seemed less aloof, not quite so much the
unattainable goddess.

She gave him her hand, as usual, one evening at parting.

"I shall not expect to see you to-morrow," said she, "until we meet at
the Pumphreys' reception. Until then, good-by."

"I thought," said he, "that if you would permit, I should like to call
in the afternoon--say at three or four. May I?"

He looked so pleadingly at her, holding the little hand in both of his,
that it is no wonder her color rose. It was li