The Ohio Democrat. (Logan, O. [Ohio]) 1886-1906, 1893-03-18

"Of course these things arc seriou,
offenses against the higher l!fe, es-
pecial,y the stoutness; and they amply
demonstrate that | am of the earth,
earthly. am glad it is proved to your
satisfaction, for otherwise there have
been moments when / have been so
fatuous as to think that you might
after all find it hard to throw me over
completely"
at is hardly fair to talk like that"
she said, with suppressed agitation. ~
try hard to recognize the facts of life.
l am u reasonable being l have not
been dreaming about the hero in mel.
odrama. But surely, omewhere, though
| have never known him yet, there is a
man who is both strong and fine; a
man who can use the adornments OF
life without falling their slave, or can
dispense with them and respect him
self no less; n man who is not ashamed
to have ideals and to strive toward
them. Is humanity SO poor, then, that
l may not hope to find him? And do
you suppose l like to tell you that you
are not he? You who come so near in
most things?"
Outside the swift November twilight
had begun to fall. The light was grow.
ing faint in the library. Amory turned
the carved paper cutter over and over
in his strong, soft hands, bending it
this way and that.
''If l were to tell her that am that
man, what would she say, wonder?"
he thought. ION my soul think that
am not far from being it. If my life is
not blameless in my own eyes, yet it
would hardly be blameworthy even in
hers. Is it nothing to have kept
ones hands clean and ones soul
unstained? Does she think man
does that without ideals? Does she re-
ally think l am under any serious mis-
apprehensions as to uses of life? Does
she-O! how hopeless it would be to
try to make her understand.
He interrupted his own thoughts alb
ruptly. The paper-knife snapped in
his hands, and he dropped the frag-
ments with a swift gesture of his
opened hands, and drew one long
breath. Then he rose, saying with a
new gravity that she had never heard
in his tones before:
$50 be 1t. You must forgive me if
seemed trihe bitter. A man does not
lose cheerfully all am losing-for l did
not ask you to marry me to make me
comfortable since you insist on my
fondness for comfort, but because it
was my one chance for happiness.
Such happiness and such stimulus as
you are still young enough to get from
many things, l find only in your pres
ence. l have only one thing more to
say. Please remember it. | am, uu-
fortunately for my comfort, too old to
change. l shall not love again. Alb
surd as it may seem-and l know you
think me quite absurd-l shall not
cease to love you as l love you now
But as for you, l know your world bet
ter than you know it, You are twenty
two. That is rather young. am not
young, but | can afford to give you ten
years out of my life to look for that ideal
OF yours And l shall think the time
we'll wasted if at the end of it you can
tell me that no one has ever come near
er it than l. You know you have never
told me that you could not love me,
never once, but only that l did not
come up to that mark. And so l do
not give up"
Her eyes had been fixed on the floor.
Now she lifted up her head, but it had
grown suddenly so dark that he could
only see the motion, not the look she
sent toward him.
as that what you truly think, you
truly feel?" she asked at last with a
note in her voice which he never re-
membered to have heard there before.
1t stirred his pulses and he wondered
duly what it meant.
He assented silently. The exhilara-
tion with which he had entered the
house, the courage with which he mad
begun the discussion, had all evapor-
ated. He felt tired he was conscious
of the night, of the burden of his
years and of the deadly soberness of
life.
"Then-theu-I almost think you
need not wait"
Eleanor, do you know what you are
saying?"
She turned her head away and faced
the gathering darkness.
'How can he be so stupid as to ask
me that9" she demanded of the friend.
ly November twilight ''Is it going to
take ten years for him to understand?'
Kate Fields Washington.