fe, he yet peopled the rooms with her.
He rose up in spirit before her entering a door. There were especial
nooks wherein his fancy could project her with such illusion that his
heart would leap as if at the actual sight of her. In particular was
there one window in the sitting-room which, being in a little
projection of the house, overlooked a special little view of its own.
From this window between the folds of the muslin curtains could be
seen a file of blooming hollyhocks. Behind them a grassy expanse
arose with a long ascent, and the rosette--like blossoms of pink and
pale-gold, with gray-green bosses of leaves, lay against the green
field like the design on a shield.

In this window was an old-fashioned rocking-chair cushioned softly
with faded, rose-patterned chintz, and before it stood always a small
footstool covered with dim-brown canvas on which was a wreath of
roses done in cross-stitch by his mother in her girlhood. Anderson
loved to see Charlotte sitting in this chair with her feet on the
footstool, her pretty head leaning back against the faded roses of
the chintz, the delicate curve of her cheek towards him, as she
swayed gently back and forth and seemed to gaze peacefully out of the
window at the hollyhocks blooming against the green hill. It was
characteristic of the man's dreams that the girl's face in them was
turned a little from him. She never saw him when he entered, she
never broke the sweet silence of her own dreams within dreams, for
him, and he never, even in dreams, touched the soft curve of that
averted cheek, or even one of the little hands lying as lightly as
flowers in her muslin lap. Anderson, the commonplace man in the
grocery business, in the commonplace present, dreamed as reverently
and spiritually of the lady of his love as Dante of his Beatrice, or
Petrarch of his Laura. He would go down to the grave with his songs
all unsung; but the man was a poet, as are all who worship the god,
and not the likeness of themselves in him. As Anderson sat on the
porch that summer night, to his fancy Charlotte Carroll sat on the
step above him. Without fairly looking he could see the sweep of her
white draperies and the mild fairness, producing the effect of
luminosity, of her face in the dusk.

Then suddenly Charlotte herself dispelled the illusion. She passed by
with her sister Ina and a young man. Anderson heard the low, sweet
babble of girls' tongues and a hearty, boyish laugh before they cam