The Heart

Be that as it may, I was going along in such fashion through the

greenness of the park, so deep with rich lights and shadows on it

that May morning that it seemed like plunging thought-high in a

green sea, when suddenly I stopped and my heart leapt, for there sat

in the grass before me, clutching some of it with a tiny hand like a

pink pearl, the sweetest little maid that ever this world held. All

in white she was, and of a stuff so thin that her baby curves of

innocence showed through it, and the little smock slipped low down

over her rosy shoulders, and her little toes curled pink in the

green of the grass, for she had no shoes on, having run away, before

she was dressed, by some oversight of her black nurse, and down from

her head, over all her tiny body, hiding all save the merest glimmer

of the loveliness of her face, fell the most wonderful shower of

gold locks that ever a baby of only two years old possessed. She sat

there with the sunlight glancing on her through a rift in the trees,

all in a web of gold, floating and flying on the May wind, and for a

minute, I, being well instructed in such lore, thought she was no

mortal child, but something more, as she was indeed, but in another

sense.

I stood there, and looked and looked, and she still pulled up tiny

handfuls of the green grass, and never turned nor knew me near, when

suddenly there burst with a speed like a storm, and a storm indeed

it was of brute life, with loud stamps of a very fury of sound which

shook the earth as with a mighty tread of thunder, out of a thicker

part of the wood, a great black stallion on a morning gallop with

all the freedom of the spring and youth firing his blood, and one

step more and his iron hoofs would have crushed the child. But I was

first. I flung myself upon her and threw her like a feather to one

side, and that was the last I knew for a while. When I knew myself

again there was a mighty pain in my shoulder, which seemed to be the

centre of my whole existence by reason of it, and there was the feel

of baby kisses on my lips. The courage of her blood was in that tiny

maid. She had no thought of flight nor tears, though she knew not

but that black thunderbolt would return, and she knew not what my

ghastly silence meant. She had crept close to me, though she might

well have been bruised, such a tender thing she was, by the rough

fling I had given her, and was trying to kiss me awake as she did

her father. And I, rude boy, all unversed in grace and tenderness,

and hitherto all unsought of love, felt her soft lips on mine, and,

looking, saw that baby face all clouded about with gold, and I loved

her forever.