true. She
sat down, in deep relief at finding herself near him.

"Playmate," she said, "things are very bad indeed."

"Are they, my dear playmate?"

Her breath came in a sob, his voice sounded so kind, so altogether
merciful of her, whatever she might do.

"Dreadful things are happening," she said.

"The prince?"

"Not the prince, this time. Worse things."

"Tell me, child."

She had ceased to be altogether his playmate. Deeper needs had called
out keener sympathies, and she found some comfort even in his altered
tone. She waited for a time, listening to the summer sounds, and vainly
wishing she had been a more fortunate woman, and that these sad steps
need not be retraced in retrospect before life could go on again.

"You will have to listen to a long story," she said at last. "And how am
I to tell you! Ask me questions."

"How far shall I go back?"

"To the beginning--to the beginning of my growing up. Before I met Tom
Fulton."

"When you meant to sing?"

"I did sing. But you mustn't think that was what I wanted. I never
wanted anything but love."

"Go on." To him, who, in his solitude, had never expected to find close
companionship, it was inconceivable that they should be there speaking
the unconsidered truth. She, too, who, in the world, had tasted the
likeness of happy intercourse, only to despair of it, had found a goal.
Here now was the real to which all the old promises had been leading.

"You must understand me," she said, in a low voice. "I'm going to tell
you the plain truth. How awful if you didn't understand!"

"I shall understand. Go on."

"I don't know how it is with other girls, but always I dreamed of love,
always after my first childhood. I thought of kings and queens, knights
and ladies. They walked in pairs and loved each other."

"What did you mean by love?"

"Each would die for the other. That was my understanding of it. I knew
the time would come some day when a beautiful young man would say to me,
'I would die for you,' and I should say to him, 'And I would die for
you.' It was a kind of dream. Maybe it would not have been, except that
I was never much of a child when I was a child. I had ecstatic times
with my father, but I was lonesome. The lover was to change that, when
he came."

"When did he come?"

"He came several times, but either he was too rough and he frightened
me, or too common and he repelled me, or--"

"And Tom Fulton came!"

"Yes, walking just the