From the outside, where the nervous electric light and the placid moonlight mingled, little gimlets of light bored through, insisted and arrived, through the matting of vine leaves that hid the porch, and made little specks of light within, impertinent and curious, little specks on the wall, little specks on the floor. “Want you!” Hennion said. “I always want you.” He bent over till her breath was warm on his face. “How can you be so near me, and so far away? Did you think I loved you as a habit? You're God's crown of glory that he sent me, but it won't stay still on my head. Do you remember when you used to sit on the floor upstairs in a white dress, with a red ribbon on it somewhere? Don't remember the red ribbon? You used to cut faces on shingles, with dismal expressions and hard-luck features, and you thought they were the beautifullest things, and got very hot because I didn't. But I thought that you were the beautifullest girl with the red ribbon. I did so.” “I didn't know that.” “I know. I'm a poor, tongue-tied lover, Milly. I ought to fling myself loose on the subject, and describe the gorgeous state of my heart, and lie like a seaman ashore, if I had the gift of my calling. I'm no poet or dreamer of dreams. I'm after realities. I don't expect to be a burning and shining light to other people or reform anybody whatever, but I expect to please one girl, if she'll let me try. Real things! What do you suppose they are? One time I was born, and now I love you, and sometime I'll die, and God knows what then. Are those realities? Can you see the river there, where the moonlight is on it? It runs down to the lake, and the force that draws it down is as real as the river itself. Love is a real thing, more real than hands and feet. It pulls like gravitation and drives like steam. When you came to me there at the Hall, what was it brought you? An instinct? You asked me to take care of you. I had an instinct that was what I was made for. I thought it was all safe then, and I felt like the eleventh commandment and loved mine enemy for a brother. I can't do anything without you! I've staked my hopes on you, so far as I can see them. I've come to the end of my rope, and there's something between us yet, but you must cross it. I can't cross it.” From where Hennion sat he could look past the porch pillar, to the spot at the street corner directly under the electric light. The street was deserted except for some solitary walker, pacing the sidewalk slowly past the house, and hidden from Hennion by the porch vines. Now he had turned and was coming back again slowly to the corner, and now Hennion glanced out beyond the pillar and saw Aidee standing under the electric light. Then Aidee was again hidden by the porch vines, and again his slow footsteps passed on the sidewalk some hundreds of feet from the porch.