Holding a package just above her head, he read: “Mademoiselle Esther Powel, Etats Unis d’Amerique. He’s sending back all your old letters. This looks as if it might hold a dozen or two.”
“They are not mine,” she cried, as, laughing, she leaped and snatched it from his hand.
“Glenn Andrews,” she repeated, breathlessly, holding the writing before her eyes. Without a word she stole away, to read it alone. He loved her, this cousin of hers, this practical, unimaginative man, but he had never understood her. Her ideas were not his ideas, nor her hopes his hopes, but he was proud of her in an uncomprehending manner and he smiled at her aspirations as at his boy baby’s ambition to drive the mules. A thrill crept down to her heart. It was a book exquisitely bound, bearing Glenn Andrew’s name. She fondled its pages, ran her hand lovingly over their smooth surface. The book opened to a folded paper, on which were some notes jotted down for the violin, an accompaniment to a song that he had written.
Turning the leaves, she came to a card; a line on the back of it read: “You can learn this. Let me hear at New York address after April.” It was dropped by a poem, “My Little Love of Long Ago.”
This girl, gifted with all the subtlety of rare natures, understood. Her face quivered with tenderness as she gazed at it. The world was full of light—somebody in it took an interest in her. This had fallen like some faint, soft fragrance in her life. Between laughter and tears she read the poem:
“My little love of long ago,
(How swiftly fly the tired years!)
She told me solemnly and low
Of all her hopes and all her fears.
She feared the dangers of the way,