nt--so different."

"So you have refused Mr. Wilberforce? Well, well, he has reached the age
when a poor lover may make an excellent friend--and besides, to become
Rosa's mouthpiece for a moment, he is very rich."

"And old enough to be my father--but it isn't that. Age has nothing to
do with it, nor has congeniality--it is nothing in real life that comes
between, for I am fond of him and I don't mind his white hairs in the
least, but I can't give up my visions--my ideal hopes."

"Ah, Laura, Laura," sighed the old man, "the trouble is that you don't
live on the earth at all, but in a little hanging garden of the
imagination."

"And yet I want life," she said.

"We all want it, my child, until we've had it. At your age I wanted it,
too, for I had my dreams, though I was not a poet. But there are
precious few of us who are willing in youth to accept the world on its
own terms--we want to add our little poem to the universal prose of
things."

"But it is life itself that I want," repeated Laura.

"And so I wanted Rosa, my dear, every bit as much."

"Rosa!" There was a glow of surprise in the look she turned upon him.

"You find it hard to believe, but it is true nevertheless. I had my
golden dream like everyone else, and when Rosa loved me I told myself it
had all come true. Well, perhaps, in a measure it has, only, after all,
Rosa turned out to be more suited to real life than to poetic
moonshine."

"I can't imagine even you idealizing Aunt Rosa," said Laura, "but that I
suppose is the way life equalises things."

"That way or another, and the worst it can do for us is to return us our
own dreams in grotesque and mutilated forms. That will most likely be
your portion, too, my child, for life has hurt every poet since the
world began, and it will hurt you more than most because you are so big
a creature."

Laura stirred suddenly and, after gazing a moment at the fire, turned
upon him a face which had grown brilliant with animation. "I want to
taste everything," she said. "I want to turn every page one after one."

"And yet you live the life of a hermit thrush--you have in reality as
little part in that bustling turmoil of New York out there as has poor
Angela herself."

"But my adventures will come to me--I feel that they will come."

"Then you're happy, my dear, for you have the best of your adventures as
you call them in your waiting time."

She leaned toward him, resting her cheek on his gentle old h