We don't say any more; she sits down on a footstool with her head against my knee, and I just smooth it. When the clocks strike ten through the house, she rises, and I stand up. I see that she has been crying quietly,—poor, lonely, little soul! I lift her off her feet and kiss her, and stammer out my sorrow at losing her, and she is gone.
Next morning the little maid brought me an envelope from the lady who left by the first train. It held a little gray glove. That is why I carry it always, and why I haunt the inn and never leave it for longer than a week; why I sit and dream in the old chair that has a ghost of her presence always, dream of the spring to come with the May-fly on the wing, and the young summer when midges dance, and the trout are growing fastidious; when she will come to me across the meadow grass, through the silver haze, as she did before,—come with her gray eyes shining to exchange herself for her little gray glove.
AN EMPTY FRAME.
It was a simple, pretty little frame, such as you may buy at any sale cheaply; its ribbed wood, aspinalled white, with an inner frame of pale-blue plush; its one noticeable feature that it was empty. And yet it stood on the middle of the bedroom mantelboard.
It was not a luxurious room; none of the furniture matched. It was a typical boarding-house bedroom.
Any one preserving the child habit of endowing inanimate objects with human attributes might fancy that the flickering flames of the fire took a pleasure in bringing into relief the bright bits in its dinginess; for they played over the silver-backed brushes and the cut-glass perfume bottles on the dressing-table, flicked the bright beads on the toes of coquettish small shoes and the steel clasps of a travelling bag in the corner, imparting a casual air of comfort such as the touch of certain dainty women lends to a common room.
A woman enters,—a woman wondrously soft and swift in all her movements. She seems to reach a place without your seeing how; no motion of elbow or knee betrays her. Her fingers glide swiftly down the buttons of her gown; in a second she has freed herself from its ensheathing; garment after garment falls from her, until she stands almost free. She gets into nightdress and loose woollen dressing-gown, and slips her naked feet into fur-lined slippers, with a movement that is somehow the expression of an intense nervous relief from a thrall. Everything she does is done so swiftly that you see the result rather than the working out of each action.
She sinks into a chair before the fire, and clasping her hands behind her head, peers into the glowing embers. The firelight, lower than her face, touches it cruelly; picks out and accentuates as remorselessly as a rival woman the autographs past emotions have traced on its surface; deepens the hollows of her delicate thoughtful temples and the double furrow between her clever irregular eyebrows. Her face is more characteristic than beautiful. Nine men would pass it, the tenth sell his immortal soul for it. The chin is strong, the curve of jaw determined; there is a little full place under the chin's sharp point. The eyes tell you little; they are keen and inquiring, and probe others' thoughts rather than reveal their own. The whole face is one of peculiar strength and self-reliance. The mouth is its contradiction; the passionate curve of the upper-lip with its mobile corners, and the tender little under-lip that shelters timidly under it, are encouraging promises against its strength.
The paleness of some strong feeling tinges her face; a slight trembling runs through her frame. Her inner soul-struggle is acting as a strong developing fluid upon a highly sensitized plate; anger, scorn, pity, contempt chase one another like shadows across her face. Her eyes rest upon the empty frame, and the plain white space becomes alive to her. Her mind's eye fills it with a picture it once held in its dainty embrace,—a rare head among the rarest heads of men, with its crest of hair tossed back from the great brow, its proud poise and the impress of grand, confident, compelling genius that reveals itself, one scarce knows how; with the brute possibility of an untamed, natural man lurking about the mouth and powerful throat. She feels the subduing smile of eyes that never failed to make her weak as a child under their gaze, and tame as a hungry bird. She stretches out her hands with a pitiful little movement, and then, remembering, lets them drop, and locks them until the knuckles stand out whitely. She shuts her eyes, and one tear after the other starts from beneath her lids, trickles down her cheeks, and drops with a splash into her lap. She does not sob, only cries quietly; and she sees, as if she held the letter in her hand, the words that decided her fate:—
"You love me; I know it, you other half of me. You want me to complete your life, as I you, you good, sweet woman; you slight, weak thing, with your strong will and your grand, great heart; you witch, with a soul of clean white fire. I kiss your hands,—such little hands! I never saw the like; slim child-hands, with a touch as cool and as soft as a snow-flake! You dear one, come to me; I want you, now, always. Be with me, work with me, share with me, live with me, my equal as a creature; above me, as my queen of women! I love you, I worship you; but you know my views. I cannot, I will not bind myself to you by any legal or religious tie. I must be free and unfettered to follow that which I believe right for me. If you come to me in all trust, I can and will give myself to you in all good faith,—yours as much as you will, forever! I will kneel to you; why should I always desire to kneel to you? It is not that I stand in awe of you, or that I ever feel a need to kneel at all; but always to you, and to you alone. Come! I will crouch at your feet and swear myself to you!"