CHAPTER II
CONFIDENCES
When Spring grows old, and sleepy winds
Set from the South with odors sweet,
I see my love in green, cool groves,
Speed down dusk aisles on shining feet.
She throws a kiss and bids me run,
In whispers sweet as roses' breath;
I know I can not win the race,
And at the end I know is death.
O race of love! we all have run
Thy happy course through groves of spring,
And cared not, when at last we lost,
For life, or death, or anything!
—Atalanta: Maurice Thompson.
Miss Patricia received me the following afternoon on the lawn at St. Agatha's where, in a cool angle of the buildings, a maid was laying the cloth on a small table.
"It is good of you to come. Helen will be here presently. She went for a walk on the shore."
"You must both of you make free of the Glenarm preserve. Don't consider the wall over there a barricade; it's merely to add to the picturesqueness of the landscape."
Miss Patricia was quite rested from her journey, and expressed her pleasure in the beauty and peace of the place in frank and cordial terms. And to-day I suspected, what later I fully believed, that she affected certain old-fashioned ways in a purely whimsical spirit. Her heart was young enough, but she liked to play at being old! Sister Theresa's own apartments had been placed at her disposal, and the house, Miss Patricia declared, was delightfully cool.