The Choir Invisible

He would have passed the house, supposing they were to go to the familiar

seat in the garden; but a bench had been placed under a forest tree near the

door and she led the way to this. The significance of the action was lost on

him.

"Yes," she continued, returning to a subject which furnished both an escape

and a concealment of her feelings, "I have been revisiting my girlhood. You

love Kentucky but I cannot make myself over."

Her face grew full of the finest memories and all the fibres of her nature

were becoming more unstrung. He had made sure of his strength before he had

ever dared see her this day, had pitted his self-control against every

possible temptation to betray himself that could arise throughout their

parting; and it was this very composure, so unlocked for, that unconsciously

drove her to the opposite extreme. Shades of colour swept over her neck and

brow, as though she were setting under wind-tossed blossoming peach boughs.

Her lustrous, excited eyes seemed never able to withdraw themselves from his

whitened solemn face. Its mute repressed suffering touched her; its

calmness filled her with vague pain that at such a time he could be so calm.

And the current of her words ran swift, as a stream loosened at last from

some steep height."Sometime you might be in that part of Virginia. I should

like you to know the country there and the place where my father's house

stood. And when you see the Resident, I wish you would recall my father to

him. And you remember that one of my brothers was a favourite young officer

of his. I should like you to hear him speak of them both: he has not

forgotten. Ah! My father! He had his faults, but they were all the faults of

a gentleman. And the faults of my brothers were the faults of gentlemen. I

never saw my mother; but I know how genuine she was by the books she liked

and her dresses and her jewels, and the manner in which she had things put

away in the closets. One's childhood is everything! If I had not felt I was

all there was in the world to speak for my father and my mother and my

brothers! Ah, sometimes pride is the greatest of virtues!"

He bowed his head in assent.

With a swift transition she changed her voice and manner and the

conversation:

"That is enough about me. Have you thought that you will soon be talking to

the greatest man in the world--you who love ideals?"