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.
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