And he told her. Looking aside or at the sky, he told her of her face like a rose in the moonlight, of her hair like some mist spun and woven in shadows and glamours of its own, of her long creamy arms and her hands that a god had fashioned lovingly. He told her of her eyes and their deeps, and their lashes and the brows above them. He told her of the strange rhythm of her musical form when she walked or danced or leaned upon the arm of her chair.
He dared not look at her lest he lose his remembrance of them; but he heard her laughing, softly at first, then with pride and wild triumph. And she crushed his hand in hers and kissed it, murmuring: "God bless you! God bless you!"
For even in poverty it is sweet to know that once we were rich.
THE GHOSTLY COUNSELORS
I
In a little hall bedroom in a big city lay a little woman in a big trouble. She had taken the room under an assumed name, and a visitor had come to her there—to little her in the big city, from the bigger unknown.
She had taken the room as "Mrs. Emerton." The landlady, Mrs. Rotch, had had her doubts. But then she was liberal-minded—folks had to be in that street. Still, she made it an invariable rule that "no visitors was never allowed in rooms," a parlor being kept for the purpose up to ten o'clock, when the landlady went to bed in it, "her having to have her sleep as well as anybody."
But, in spite of the rules, a visitor had come to "Mrs. Emerton's" room—a very, very young man. His only name as yet was "the Baby." She dared not give the young man his father's name, for then people would know, and she had come to the city to keep people from knowing. She had come to the wicked city from the sweet, wholesome country, where, according to fiction, there is no evil, but where, according to fact, people are still people and moonlight is still madness. In the country, love could be concealed but not its consequence.