“It’s beautiful,” said O’Hara. “But in every foolish heart of us there’s a lady in a tower to whom we call ‘Rappunzel, Rappunzel, let down your hair’—waiting to go climbing up the shining locks to her heart—and Paradise.”
Delilah rested her chin on linked fingers, her eyes at once dancing and demure. “How lamentably old-fashioned you are for all your radicalism. Shall I let my hair grow?”
“It’s the wonder it must be,” he whispered. “Breaking and foaming below your waist.”
“I’ve always thought of it, somehow, as a—a symbol,” she said, her eyes fixed on the coffee that she was slowly stirring. “When I cut it off, I said to each shining length, ‘There you go, Folly—and you, Frailty—and you, Weakness——’”
“And did you never think that your namesake must have cried of old to other shining locks ‘There you go, Strength?’”
The new Delilah looked suddenly enchantingly mischievous. “Well, but that was not her own hair! It belonged to a mere man who chose a very vulnerable spot to keep his strength. You have learned wisdom since Samson.”
“I wonder!” said O’Hara.
“I’ll remember what you have told me,” she laughed up at him. “You seem to hold that woman’s strength, too, is in her hair. Perhaps—perhaps you are right, after all. Will you come to see me one of these days, and try to convert me?”
They were all standing; he rose, too, his eyes holding her.
“When may I come—to-morrow?”