One made himself a name for skill to trace
To its last hiding-place,
Each secret Mother Earth engaged to save,
Of jungle, sea or cave.
No path so devious but he mastered it;
And, bit by bit,
From off the face of mystery, he tore
The veil she wore;
Then, turning inward all his skill in seeing,
To solve the knot of Being,
In the deep crypts of Self fordone he lay,
Quite cast away.
—Adventures in Egoism.
Every morning, now, a box of flowers went up to Elizabeth, at the house with the white columns; and every evening Mr. Amidon bravely followed. The terror he felt of women was overpowered by the greater terror of losing this woman, and the fortitude and resolution he possessed in all other fields of action were returning to him. His violets and carnations she always wore for him, and all the roses except the red ones, which she put in vases and kept near her, but did not wear. She was ineffably kind and sweet, in a high and pure and far-off way fit for Olympus, but all the intimate little coquetries and tricks of charm with which she had at first received and disconcerted him were gone. She talked to him in that low voice of hers, but oftener she sat silent, and seemed to desire him to talk to her.
Since that first night, he could not bring himself to act a part, further than to assume the name and place of Eugene Brassfield. He stood afar off, looked at his divinity and worshiped. He read to her her favorite books, and ventured somewhat, out of his exceptional knowledge, to expound them—whereat she looked away and listened with something of the astonishment with which she had received his disquisitions on poetry and art on that first unlucky evening. For the most part, however, he, too, was inclined to silences, in which he looked at Elizabeth in the happiness of a lover's wretchedness. The love she had given to Brassfield seemed to him based on the deceitful pretensions of that wretch, and in any case it was not his, and he felt repelled from accepting it. He yearned to show her the soul of Florian Amidon, purified, adorned, and dedicated to her.
Once or twice she had hinted at something fateful which she wanted to say to him; but he had begged her to wait. After a few days of this slavish devotion of his, she seemed less aloof, not quite so much the unattainable goddess.
She gave him her hand, as usual, one evening at parting.
"I shall not expect to see you to-morrow," said she, "until we meet at the Pumphreys' reception. Until then, good-by."
"I thought," said he, "that if you would permit, I should like to call in the afternoon—say at three or four. May I?"
He looked so pleadingly at her, holding the little hand in both of his, that it is no wonder her color rose. It was like the worshipful inception of a new courtship.
"I shall be invisible," said she, "all day—so you must wait. You haven't any time to bother with me, anyhow. Haven't you your platform to complete? A public man must attend to public matters first, and, anyhow, I shall be denied to all my friends, and you must wait with the rest!"
"It is hard to wait," he answered, "when you are so near."