r to myself. It was
such a day! There are days that are the devil's, but that was truly one
of God's. She took me to a little pond under an elm-tree, and we dragged
it, we two, an hour, for a kind of tiny red worm to feed some creature
that she had. We found them in the mud, and while she was bending over,
the curls got in her eyes. If you could have seen her then, I think,
sir, you would have said she was like the first sight of spring.... We
had tea afterwards, all together, in the long grass under some
fruit-trees. If I had the knack of words, there are things that I could
say." He bent, as though in deference to those unspoken memories.
"Twilight came on while we were sitting there. A wonderful thing is
twilight in the country! It became time for us to go. There was an
avenue of trees close by--like a church with a window at the end, where
golden light came through. I walked up and down it with her. 'Will you
come again?' she whispered, and suddenly she lifted up her face to be
kissed. I kissed her as if she were a little child. And when we said
good-bye, her eyes were looking at me across her father's shoulder, with
surprise and sorrow in them. 'Why do you go away?' they seemed to
say.... But I must tell you," he went on hurriedly, "of a thing that
happened before we had gone a hundred yards. We were smoking our pipes,
and I, thinking of her--when out she sprang from the hedge and stood in
front of us. Dalton cried out, 'What are you here for again, you mad
girl?' She rushed up to him and hugged him; but when she looked at me,
her face was quite different--careless, defiant, as one might say--it
hurt me. I couldn't understand it, and what one doesn't understand
frightens one."

IV

"Time went on. There was no swordsman, or pistol-shot like me in London,
they said. We had as many pupils as we liked--it was the only part of my
life when I have been able to save money. I had no chance to spend it.
We gave lessons all day, and in the evening were too tired to go out.
That year I had the misfortune to lose my dear mother. I became a rich
man--yes, sir, at that time I must have had not less than six hundred a
year.

"It was a long time before I saw Eilie again. She went abroad to Dresden
with her father's sister to learn French and German. It was in the
autumn of 1875 when she came back to us. She was seventeen then--a
beautiful young creature." He paused, as if to gather his forces for
de