“I am thirty-five,” he had once said to her. “I tell you only what all the world knows.” This last was a pet phrase of his in relating details about himself. She understood by it that, in some brilliant circle far from Roseborough, he had been a concert artist of note.
When the little air was ended, she said:
“I have learned the accompaniment to that. We will play it this evening. You have heard from Mrs. Lee that I am having a few guests for an hour or so this evening.”
“No! I have not heard. I went just now to play for Mrs. Lee, whom I love with a reverent affection. But I saw through the windows that she had a woman there, and oh, such a running hither and thither with towels and candles and so forth! So I stole silently away. I will come, dear Rosamond, and we will play. But now I must go home to Mütterlein Hackensee, who will have made a simple but perfect meal for me. She will be so distressed that I am not there to eat it fresh from her hands.”
“I see Mr. Andrews coming over the top of the hill. If you wait a moment you will just catch him below the wall here, and he will drive you home.”
“Ah! So? That is excellent. Rosamond, to-day, an hour ago, perhaps, I made a wonderful discovery. I felt like some poor simple-minded peasant who finds a sacred relic. I, also, wished to kneel, in awe and joy, before a holy thing which I could not understand because my mind could not grasp it. You are my dear sister and my spiritual kin, and to you I will tell what I found.”
“What? Tell me,” she said gently.
“I discovered that I am Richard Frei—a man, like any other man; and that I may love and marry—like any man. The amazement of it has overwhelmed me.”
The rapt intensity in his eyes forbade her to smile. With a spontaneous movement of sympathy she slipped her hand into his arm.
“But why does that amaze you? The right to love is given to every man—to all the world. It has always been so.”