"But that is the balladist's notion. The truth is that you were a lady at
the Court of Clovis, and I was a heathen captive. I heard you sing a
Christian hymn--and asked for baptism." By a great effort he managed to
look as if he did not mean it.
But she did not seem over-pleased with his fancy, for, the surprise fading
from her face, "Oh, that was the way you remembered!" she said.
"Perhaps it was not that way alone. You won't despise me for being mawkish
to-night?" he asked. "I haven't had the chance for so long."
The night air wrapped them warmly, and the balm of the little breezes
that stirred the foliage around them was the smell of damask roses from
the garden. The creek tinkled over the pebbles at their feet, and a drowsy
bird, half-wakened by the moon, crooned languorously in the sycamores. The
girl looked out at the flashing water through downcast lashes. "Is it
because it is so transient that beauty is pathetic?" she said; "because we
can never come back to it in quite the same way? I am a sentimental girl.
If you are born so, it is never entirely teased out of you, is it?
Besides, to-night is all a dream. It isn't real, you know. You couldn't be
mawkish."
Her tone was gentle as a caress, and it made him tingle to his finger-
tips. "How do you know?" he asked in a low voice.
"I just know. Do you think I'm very 'bold and forward'?" she said,
dreamily.
"It was your song I wanted to be sentimental about. I am like one 'who
through long days of toil'--only that doesn't quite apply--'and nights
devoid of ease'--but I can't claim that one doesn't sleep well here; it is
Plattville's specialty--like one who "'Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.'"
"Those blessed old lines!" she said. "Once a thing is music or poetry, all
the hand-organs and elocutionists in the world cannot ruin it, can they?
Yes; to live here, out of the world, giving up the world, doing good and
working for others, working for a community as you do----"
"I am not quite shameless," he interrupted, smilingly. "I was given a life
sentence for incompetency, and I've served five years of it, which have
been made much happier than my deserts."
"No," she persisted, "that is your way of talking of yourself; I know you
would always 'run yourself down,' if one paid any attention to it. But to
give up the world, to drop out of it without regret, to come here and do
what you have done, and to live the life that must be so desperately dry
and dull for a man of your sort, and yet to have the kind of heart that
makes wonderful melodies sing in itself--oh!" she cried, "I say that is
fine!"