But here Mr. Dingwell was interrupted. A wild cry, a wild laugh, and—"Oh, Arthur, it's you!"
He felt, as he would have said, "oddly" for a moment—a sudden flood of remembrance, of youth. The worn form of that old outcast, who had not felt the touch of human kindness for nearly thirty years, was clasped in the strain of an inextinguishable and angelic love—in the thin arms of one likewise faded and old, and near the long sleep in which the heart is fluttered and pained no more.
There was a pause, a faint laugh, a kind of sigh, and he said—
"So you've found me out."
"Darling, darling! you're not changed?"
"Change!" he answered, in a low tone. "There's a change, little linnet, from summer to winter; where the flowers were the snow is. Draw the curtain, and let us look on one another."