"This is horrible, Celia!" cried Elmore. The scent of the flowers lying on the table seemed to choke him; the turtle clawing about on the smooth surface looked demoniacal. "Why——"
"Now, don't ask me why she refused him, Owen. Of course she couldn't care for a boy like that. But he can't realize it, and it's just as miserable for him as if he were a thousand years old."
Elmore hung his head. "It was all a mistake. But how should I know any better? I am a straightforward man, Celia; and I am unfit for the care that has been thrown upon me. It's more than I can bear. No, I'm not fit for it!" he cried at last; and his wife, seeing him so crushed, now said something to console him.
"I know you're not. I see it more and more. But I know that you will do the best you can, and that you will always act from a good motive. Only do try to be more on your guard."
"I will—I will," he answered humbly.
He had a temptation, the next time he visited Hoskins, to tell him the awful secret, and to see how the situation of that night, with this lurid light upon it, affected him: it could do poor Andersen, now on his way to India, no harm. He yielded to his temptation, at the same time that he confessed his own blunder about the flowers.
Hoskins whistled. "I tell you what," he said, after a long pause, "there are some things in history that I never could realize,—like Mary, Queen of Scots, for instance, putting on her best things, and stepping down into the front parlor of that castle to have her head off. But a thing like this, happening on your own balcony, helps you to realize it."
"It helps you to realize it," assented Elmore, deeply oppressed by the tragic parallel.
"He's just beginning to feel it about now," said Hoskins, with strange sang froid. "I reckon it's a good deal like being shot. I didn't fully appreciate my little hit under a couple of days. Then I began to find out that something had happened. Look here," he added, "I want to show you something;" and he pulled the wet cloth off a breadth of clay which he had set up on a board stayed against the wall. It was a bas-relief representing a female figure advancing from the left corner over a stretch of prairie towards a bulk of forest on the right; bison, bear, and antelope fled before her; a lifted hand shielded her eyes; a star lit the fillet that bound her hair.
"That's the best thing you've done, Hoskins," said Elmore. "What do you call it?"