s experience of cities rich in high historic
charm, works of art where the rapture and exaltation of long-vanished
lives have been exultingly fixed in wonderful colors or imperishable
marbles, he had carried away merely a hubbub of recollections of places
where the best wines were found and his miseries at being reduced in
certain cases to the position of a deaf-mute through his inability to
grapple with the difficulties of foreign tongues.

No, it did not in those days occur to me that I had a rival in Mr.
Talbot. Helen and I used to laugh at his crass ignorance, and mystify
him now and then by our allusions. Miss Lenox was never vivacious at
table, and used to listen languidly to all of us, turning to me now and
then and regarding me with a sort of pleased curiosity when she thought
I overmatched her heavy admirer.

As I have said, I had turned to composition as an amusement, an
occupation, and perhaps a refuge from feelings which were rapidly
becoming an ever-present pain. I recall one day when I had sat for hours
at my desk writing busily, utterly wrapped up in my fancies--so
engrossed, indeed, that when I had finished my work I looked with
astonishment at my watch and discovered that it was long past two
o'clock. I rose and went to the window, pushed aside the curtains and
threw open the blinds, and gazed out. I overlooked the garden, which was
deserted except by the bees and humming-birds busy among the flowers.
The mid-day heat had passed, and a breeze rustled the leaves and moaned
in the pine trees. It was a fair world, and I felt what one often
experiences in coming back to reality after high emotion--a sort of
strangeness in the beauty of tree and grass and sea and wood.

While I stood there some one advanced along the garden-path, looked up,
saw me and beckoned. It was but a moment's effort to join her, and
almost before I had realized what I was doing I was beside Miss Lenox in
the garden.

"Come and sit down in the arbor," she said softly.

"No," I returned, remembering that I had sworn to myself not to yield to
her caprices, "I am going for a walk."

She regarded me pensively. "May I go?" she asked.

"Oh yes, you may go, Georgy," I said with a little laugh. "I am only too
happy, I am afraid, if you ask to go anywhere with me."

"Don't take me where it is wet," she observed simply, "for I have on
thin slippers;" and she stretched out a little foot.

"I will take care of you," I answered her.

Sh