"My blessed child!" he cried, in great distress and perturbation, "What
have I done? I--I----"
"Call me 'small' all you like!" she answered. "I don't care. It isn't
that. You mustn't think me such an imbecile." She dropped her hands from
her face and shook the tears from her eyes with a mournful laugh. He saw
that her hands were clenched tightly and her lip trembled. "I will not
cry!" she said in a low voice.
"Somebody ought to murder me; I ought to have thought--personalities are
hideous----"
"Don't! It wasn't that."
"I ought to be shot----"
"Ah, please don't say that," she said, shuddering; "please don't, not even
as a joke--after last night."
"But I ought to be for hurting you, indeed----"
She laughed sadly, again. "It wasn't that. I don't care what you call me.
I am small. You'll try to forgive me for being such a baby? I didn't mean
anything I said. I haven't acted so badly since I was a child."
"It's my fault, all of it. I've tired you out. And I let you get into
that crush at the circus--" he was going on, remorsefully.
"That!" she interrupted. "I don't think I would have missed the circus."
He had a thrilling hope that she meant the tent-pole; she looked as if she
meant that, but he dared not let himself believe it.
"No," he continued; "I have been so madly happy in being with you that
I've fairly worn out your patience. I've haunted you all day, and
I have----"
"All that has nothing to do with it," she said, slowly. "Just after you
left, this afternoon, I found that I could not stay here. My people are
going abroad, to Dresden, at once, and I must go with them. That's what
almost made me cry. I leave to-morrow morning."
He felt something strike at his heart. In the sudden sense of dearth he
had no astonishment that she should betray such agitation over her
departure from a place she had known so little, and friends who certainly
were not part of her life. He rose to his feet, and, resting his arm
against a sycamore, stood staring away from her at nothing.
She did not move. There was a long silence.
He had wakened suddenly; the skies had been sapphire, the sward emerald,
Plattville a Camelot of romance; to be there, enchantment--and now, like a
meteor burned out in a breath, the necromancy fell away and he gazed into
desolate years. The thought of the Square, his dusty office, the bleak
length of Main Street, as they should appear to-morrow, gave him a faint
physical sickness. To-day it had all been touched to beauty; he had felt
fit to live and work there a thousand years--a fool's dream, and the
waking was to emptiness. He should die now of hunger and thirst in that
Sahara; he hoped the Fates would let it be soon--but he knew they would
not; knew that this was hysteria, that in his endurance he should plod on,
plod, plod dustily on, through dingy, lonely years.