"It grew in me, and with me, this pictured companion of my life. It was my childish happiness. Then the time came when she left me and I could not call her back. An old teacher rebuked me once. 'You think,' said he, 'that innocence is nothing; wait till you have lost it.'
"I believed at last, as year after year slipped away, that I had created a being of fancy too lovely to be real. I never found her--in all the women I have ever known I never found her until one night I saw Alice MacBirney. Dolly asked me that night if I had seen a ghost. She was my dream come true. Think of what it means to live to a reality that can surpass the imagination--Alice was that to me.
"To be possessed of perfect grace; that alone means so much--and grace was but one of her natural charms. I thought I knew how to love such a woman. It was all so new to her--our life here; she was like a child. I thought my love would lift me up to her. I know, too late, it dragged her down to me."
"You are too harsh. You did what you believed right."
"Right?" echoed Kimberly scornfully. "What is right? Who knows or cares? We do what we please--who does right?"
They turned their horses into a bridle-path toward the village and Kimberly continued to speak. "Sometimes I have thought, what possibilities would lie in moulding a child to your own ideas of womanhood. It must be pleasing to contemplate a girl budding into such a flower as you have trained her to be.
"But if this be pleasing, think what it is to find such a girl already in the flower of her womanhood; to find in her eyes the light that moves everything best within you; to read in them the answer to every question that springs from your heart. This is to realize the most powerful of all emotions--the love of man for woman."
The horses stopped on the divide overlooking the lakes and the sea. To the left, the village lay at their feet, and beyond, the red roofs of the Institute clustered among clumps of green trees. The sight of the Institute brought to Kimberly's mind Brother Francis, who, released from his charge at The Towers, had returned to it.
He had for a time wholly forgotten him. He reflected now that after Hamilton's departure the companionship of Francis might help to relieve his insupportable loneliness. The men rode together past the village and parted when they reached the lake, Hamilton returning to The Towers and Kimberly riding south to the Institute to take, if possible, Brother Francis home with him. He expected some objection, but was prepared to overcome it as he dismounted at the door of the infirmary and rang. A tall, shock-haired brother answered.
"I have come to see Brother Francis."