“No; they usually have a dread of dreams. Would you rather have found me still a dreamer?” he asked, looking down into her dark eyes, which drooped beneath the intensity of his gaze.
Then her delicate face, misty with sweetness, turned toward him again.
“No; dreams are for children and for old people, whose memories, like their eyes, are for things far off. This is your time to do things, not to dream them. And you have done things. I heard Major Braden telling father about you at dinner––your success in law, your getting some bill killed in the legislature, and your having been to South America. Father says you have 203 had a wonderful career for a young man. I used to think when I was a little girl that when you were a grown-up prince you would kill dragons and bring home golden fleeces.”
He smiled with a sudden deep throb of pleasure. Her voice stirred him with a sense of magic.
“This is the Braden home,” she said, stopping before a big house that seemed to be all pillars and porches. “You’ll come in for a little while, won’t you?”
“I’ll come in, if I may, and help you to recall some more of Maplewood days.”
A trim little maid opened the door and led the way into a long library where in the fireplace a pine backlog, crisscrossed by sturdy forelogs of birch and maple, awaited the touch of a match. It was given, and the room was filled with a flaring light that made the soft lamplight seem pale and feeble.
“This is a genuine Brumble fire,” he exclaimed, as they sat down before the ruddy glow. “It carries me back to farm life.”
“How many phases of life you have seen,” 204 mused Carey. “Country, college, city, tropical, and now this political life. Which one have you really enjoyed the most?”
“My life in the Land of Dreams––that beautiful Isle of Everywhere,” he replied.