From that day, the little Miss Flora’s smile became more frequent; and from Betty’s attic the bleak loneliness lifted and went out; for, though the vasty gulf of age divided them (youth and old age can only love each other as in a dream, vaguely), the girl did not find so much time for brooding—she had found a something to mother....
Betty, looking out of her attic window, began to notice that, as twilight fell, a little old gentleman would slowly pace the street opposite; and the little faded old lady, dressed for the road, would go out and meet him, and, after old-world courtesies exchanged between them, she would take his proffered arm and so together they would take their little walk abroad.
Betty came to know him, with a smile, as the Man of Pallid Ideals.
He would bring Miss Flora to the door always; ring the bell for her; and with elaborate bow and hat in hand, there take leave of her. Nearer to the lady’s room he never ventured, neither being provided with a chaperon....
Betty one day taxed Miss Flora with the charge that she was in love—and loved a poet. And the little withered waxen cheeks blushed.
“You shall read his poems, my dear,” she said; and, rising, she went to a little sandal-wood box, opened the lock with an ornate little key, and, raising the lid, let out the scent of the lavender in which was laid a little book of verse amidst other treasures.
Miss Flora handed the little volume to Betty; and she, begging her to leave the box open, said she would only read the precious book in that room.
Miss Flora kissed her, and went back to her chair.
Betty, sitting in the window in the waning light, learnt from the precious volume that the poet’s name was Cartel de Maungy; and opening the book she found written upon every leaf in tuneful verse the self-revelation of the man, the poet of faded ideals, as his race had been before him—his grandsire had gone to the guillotine for a well-turned sonnet about something that did not matter. On every page was the tale of his placid devotion; his adoration of his Flora—always from a seemly distance; his vows that they should ever move in the ideal; that the touch of his lips upon her fingers is sweet marriage enough for him; in his measured singing of jewelled queens and sapphire nights and pearly dusk he holds her finger-tips reverently and but for the moment, and that only in the distant and proper measure of the gavotte or the like stately trippings to the whispered music of viol and lute and harpsichord—throughout was no coarse bucolic love-embrace. Thus the slender verse sounded its tender music until there was almost shame in the kiss that is kissed upon the mouth.
The little old faded lady was possessed of an academic and dainty old-world Papist faith that æsthetically touched Betty’s sense of beauty.