After a moment she put him back, looking at him reproachfully.
“Oh, Ion, so soon in trouble! I heard of you in the hands of a Delilah, and I left everything. I obtained the place which would enable me to know all—her guile and your infatuation. She amuses herself with you. She has said to me that you are in love with her, and do not know it. Her husband is angry, and people talk. So soon! So soon! Oh, Ion!”
“She said it!” he stammered, becoming pale.
“She said it to me laughing. She described you gazing at her. She laughs at your innocence.”
The boy shuddered. “I will never see her again!”
Again the clairvoyant.
It is a bleak November day in a city of the North. Pedestrians hurry along, drawing their wrappings about them. Standing close to the walls of a church in one of the busiest streets, an old man tries to shelter himself from the wind. He is thin and pale and poorly clad, but he has the air of a gentleman, though an humble one. There is delicacy and amiability in his face; his fine thin hair, clouded with white, is smoothly combed, and his cotton collar is white. On his left arm hangs a small covered basket, and his right hand holds a pink wax rose slightly extended to the passers-by, with a patient half smile ready for any possible purchaser.
For a week he had stood there every day, cold, weary and tremulous with suspense, and no one had even given him a second glance. But that he did not know, for he was too timid to look any one in the face.
The afternoon waned. People were going to their homes; but the old man still stood there holding out the pink wax rose. Perhaps the most pitiful thing about him was that what he offered was so worthless, and he did not know it. Some, glancing as they passed, had, in fact, laughed at his flower and him.
At length a lady, walking down the other side of the street, caught a glimpse of him. She stopped and looked back, then crossed over and passed him slowly by, giving a sidelong, searching look into his face. Having passed, she turned and came back again.