“And she?” “Eighteen.” It was strange, but he, too, had been twenty-three and she eighteen when the end came in that glimmering, gleaming past. He remembered, and how strange the recollection seemed, taking her some flowers and some slight silver gift—a poor, inexpensive thing; she would let him give no more because he, too, was in debt—on her birthday. And now, with strange revulsion, he hardened almost into his habitual self, and grimly thought that it all was youthful nonsense, and that all such follies were very much alike. Had he spoken, he would have been guilty of one of those faults often packed with error, an apothegm—he would have said that we only become original, even in our folly, as age gives us character. “We could be so happy with so little,” said the youthful lover. The old man started. These were his own words many, many years ago; his very words to his guardian when the final appeal was made by old Bevington to what he called his better judgment so very, very long ago, in the dark, stately house upon Second Avenue. “So very little,” repeated the young man. “I have always said,” he continued, as pleased with the conceit as if it had never before glittered in the song of finches of his feather, “that we should have gold enough in her hair.” [Illustration: [Woman]] “And is her hair golden?” asked Maskelyne, and, startled by the sound of such words dropped from the lips of the distinguished counsel for many a soulless corporation and many as soulless a man, he added, hurriedly, “light.” And then the old lawyer remembered that he too, had a lock of hair that he had not sent back when he returned her letters and her picture. How bright it was! What had become of it? Where was it? In what pigeon-hole, what secret drawer? He could not for the moment remember. He looked out of the window. How bright the sunshine was! How empty the world! It seemed to build up its vacancy around him as a wall. “And she, of course, has no money?” he said, turning again. “None.” He had been sure of it. He rose and went to the window. The joyful attributes of the morning were there, but they were no longer joyful to him. The light fell in the same broad flood, still promising the glory of summer, the ripened harvest, but there was no promise for him. The sparrows preluded still the full-voiced singers of the year, when leaves are heavy with the dust and brooks run dry, but he heard only a quick, petulant twitter. A sort of dull despondency suddenly settled upon him. He forgot his visitor, and even time and place. Amid the glimmering lights and shaking shadows of the past he sought a vision, as at twilight one seeks in some deserted corridor a statue which would seem to have so taken into its grain the last rays of the already sunken sun that the marble glows in the gathering darkness with a radiance not its own.