"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!"
"You do not understand," he returned, sadly, wishing, before her, to be
unmercifully just to himself. "I came here because I couldn't make a
living anywhere else. And the 'wonderful melodies'--I have known you only
one evening--and the melodies--" He rose to his feet and took a few steps
toward the garden. "Come," he said. "Let me take you back. Let us go
before I--" he finished with a helpless laugh.
She stood by the bench, one hand resting on it; she stood all in the
tremulant shadow.
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