He started, looked across, and came to me at once, stumping over the floor in a rapture of response. He took a stool, and, sitting on it by me, gazed eagerly into my face, his own--animal, sinful, and divine--looking from a very burning bush of stubble. Smiling, in a drowsy warmth, I put out a hand, and let him imprison it in his own. Ah, foolish little bird, so to commit thyself to the snare of the fowler! I thought he would have killed it, and tore it back fluttering and wounded. “O, how could you?” I cried. “I was so happy; and you have hurt me!” He leaned in a hoarse agony to me; his breath groaned in his chest. “O, come to me!” he implored, “while I make one mouthful of you!” Then, all in an instant, he was sobbing, and tearing at his short hair, and crying incoherently-- “What have I done?--to wound my dear! Ride me, flog me, use me, but trust me no more. Bitter, bitter are the gods, who make a man stiff-kneed for their sport! Not love or penance for me, never, never. Never to kneel--to lie prone only for a show! O, child! it seems a little thing not to kneel, but--ah, to see others pray and love, yourself forbidden--what pity, what pity! I am the Olympian fool; I am the ass and clown. Behold my livery!” He pointed to the dress on the wall, and hung his head and arms in a very grief of despondency. But by now my hurt and little fright were gone, and my heart touched again to softness. “Gogo,” I said, “give it me down, please.” And he looked up wondering, and stirred and obeyed. “This, and this, and this,” I said, “in pledge of our one-day contract before Jove, or Jehovah, when the maimed shall be made whole.” My tears dropped on it, as I kissed it three times and gave it back to him. He received it wonderingly first, then sadly, and held it drooping over his knees. “Whole!” he muttered. “Ay, I don’t question I shall find my legs in Avalon; but can even Jove restore the rifled flower its honey?” Suddenly he cast himself down beside me, groaning like a bull. “O, little maid, little maid! I am a beggar, I am a beggar; but I want no reversion of a used estate. Though my own goes lame, I am proud. Give me new-minted money, that no man has worn in his pocket, or none at all.” For a moment the great human urgency of the creature made me falter. I owed him so much! could the devotion of my life more than repay him? But, alas! it needed but a little reflection to see the fond ridiculous picture the caricature it was. Had I the right even to risk a new generation of Gogos? I saw myself in imagination walking abroad, the proud convoyer of an uncountable number of little shock-headed Dutch tumblers. Perhaps if our Sovereign King had received that Carpenters’ Petition, and brought wooden legs into fashion, I might have been tempted; but it was still the vogue to walk on one’s own feet. I sat up, my lips twitching perilously near laughter.