n child, yet with one flash of her gold-curtained eyes
had she reduced me to my ancient schoolboy clumsiness. She was a woman,
but, I was again an awkward, stammering boy, rebelliously declining to
believe that a state she had come away from could retain any
significance, industrial or otherwise. Nor, in the little time left to
us, did I ever achieve a condition higher than this.

Consciously I was a prince of lofty origin in her presence, but ever
unable to make known my excellencies of rank. It was as in a dream when
we must see evil approach without power to raise an averting hand.

She was Spring with a stolen crown of Autumn; and again, she was a
sherbet--sweet, fragrant, cold, and about to melt--but not for me. I
knew that.

I heard presently that she spoke well of me. She spoke of my having a
kind face--even the kindest face in the world.

"The _kindest, plainest_ face in the world," was her fashion of putting
it. And of course that made it hopeless, since, surely, no woman has
ever loved the kindest face she knew.

Only a fool would have hoped after this--and at least I never gave her
ground to call me that. Not even did I commit the folly of revealing my
need. She alone ever knew it, and she only in the way that the child had
known the schoolboy to gloom and rage afar in his passion for her. She
had no word of mine for it then, nor had she now, and I believe she felt
rather certain there never would be any. She seemed to be grateful for
this and doubly kind, with only now and then the flash of a knowing
look, or the trifle of a deep, swiftly questioning glance, born, I dare
say, of that curiosity which the devil contrives to kindle in God's most
angelic women.

Doubtless she had a little speech of refusal patted into kindliness for
me. Perhaps she would not have been wholly anguished to have me hear
this--to be able to assure me tenderly, graciously, of the depth and
pureness of her friendship for me. Who knows? I am older now, and things
once hidden are revealed. Sometimes I think that a certain new respect
for me grew within her as the days tried the metal of my silence--a
respect, but nothing more. Her appreciation of my face was too palpably
without those reservations that so often cry louder than words.

So we sealed our secret, she and I, in an unspoken pledge, and not even
Solon Denney, so keen of scent for rivals, ever divined it.

He called me out with the old boyish whistle the day he confided