Home I went elate, high, walking on air. Nor did I consider how weak it showed, that I, the stern captain of thousands, and with a great city in my hands to play or labor with, should be thus feather-tickled with a toy! It was amazing, yes; and yet it was no less sweet:—this building of air-castles to house my Blossom in!
It stood well beyond the strike of midnight as I told Anne the word that Morton had brought. Anne raised her dove's eyes to mine when I was done, and they were wet with tears. Anne's face was as the face of a nun, in its self-sacrifice and the tender, steady disinterest that looked from it.
Now, as I exulted in a new bright life to be unrolled to the little tread of Blossom, I saw the shadows of a sorrow, vast and hopeless, settle upon Anne. At this I halted. As though to answer my silence, she put her hand caressingly upon my shoulder.
“Brother,” said Anne, “you must set aside these thoughts for Blossom of men and women she will never meet, of ballrooms she will never enter, of brilliant costumes she will never wear. It is one and all impossible; you do not understand.”
With that, irritated of too much opposition and the hateful mystery of it, I turned roughly practical.
“Well!” said I, in a hardest tone, “admitting that I do not understand; and that I think on men and women she will never meet, and ballrooms she will never enter. Still, the costumes at least I can control, and it will mightily please me if you and Blossom at once attend to the frocks.”
“You do not understand!” persisted Anne, with sober gentleness. “Blossom would not wear an evening dress.”
“Anne, you grow daft!” I cried. “How should there be aught immodest in dressing like every best woman in town? The question of modesty is a question of custom; it is in the exception one will find the indelicate. I know of no one more immodest than a prude.”
“Blossom is asleep,” said Anne, in her patient way. Then taking a bed-candle that burned on a table, she beckoned me. “Come; I will show you what I mean. Make no noise; we must not wake Blossom. She must never know that you have seen. She has held this a secret from you; and I, for her poor sake, have done the same.”
Anne opened the door of Blossom's room. My girl was in a gentle slumber. With touch light as down, Anne drew aside the covers from about her neck.