es
kindly on me, bringing back into my heart the old, odd mingling of
instinctive liking held in check by conscientious disapproval. I turn
from it, and see a massive, clean-shaven face, with the ugliest mouth
and the loveliest eyes I ever have known in a man.

"Was he as bad, do you think, as they said?" I ask of my ancient friend.

"Shouldn't wonder," the old House answers. "I never knew a worse--nor a
better."

The wind whisks it aside, leaving to view a little old woman, hobbling
nimbly by aid of a stick. Three corkscrew curls each side of her head
bob with each step she takes, and as she draws near to me, making the
most alarming grimaces, I hear her whisper, as though confiding to
herself some fascinating secret, "I'd like to skin 'em. I'd like to skin
'em all. I'd like to skin 'em all alive!"

It sounds a fiendish sentiment, yet I only laugh, and the little old
lady, with a final facial contortion surpassing all dreams, limps beyond
my ken.

Then, as though choosing contrasts, follows a fair, laughing face. I saw
it in the life only a few hours ago--at least, not it, but the poor daub
that Evil has painted over it, hating the sweetness underlying. And as
I stand gazing at it, wishing it were of the dead who change not, there
drifts back from the shadows that other face, the one of the wicked
mouth and the tender eyes, so that I stand again helpless between the
two I loved so well, he from whom I learned my first steps in manhood,
she from whom I caught my first glimpse of the beauty and the mystery of
woman. And again the cry rises from my heart, "Whose fault was it--yours
or hers?" And again I hear his mocking laugh as he answers, "Whose
fault? God made us." And thinking of her and of the love I bore her,
which was as the love of a young pilgrim to a saint, it comes into my
blood to hate him. But when I look into his eyes and see the pain that
lives there, my pity grows stronger than my misery, and I can only echo
his words, "God made us."

Merry faces and sad, fair faces and foul, they ride upon the wind; but
the centre round which they circle remains always the one: a little
lad with golden curls more suitable to a girl than to a boy, with shy,
awkward ways and a silent tongue, and a grave, old-fashioned face.

And, turning from him to my old brick friend, I ask: "Would he know me,
could he see me, do you think?"

"How should he," answers the old House, "you are so different to what he
would expect.