One evening I found her by the window, gazing out wistfully where the wind was tossing the rain, which ceased now and then in strange intermittent gusts, still wild of the tempest. She looked up at me with a smile, trustful, but earnest and pathetic. "I want to go out in the storm," she said. "Then go, child," I answered her. "Your possessions are wide, and, as we of the Basin say, you are not made of sugar, to melt; neither," I added, "are you like Lot's wife." She showed her fine teeth over that old tender and beloved reminiscence, but the wistful look, and sad, was still in her eyes. "And--I would like to put on the old shawl again, just this once," she said. "Oh," said I, "that is another thing. That is priceless, and I have it, as you know, locked among my treasures. Still, this once, yes." And I brought it to her. Still smiling at me, as pleading for her fancy, she held it at her throat as of old. I made haste to resume my reading with seeming preoccupation apart, for I thought she wished to go alone. "Aren't you coming?" said she, wistfully again, and paled and turned to me. The look in her eyes--she wanted me! Oh, how my heart leaped--a trick taught it at the Basin, which now it will never get over. But, sly as Captain Leezur, I hid my delight in the folds of my great overcoat. Long we walked together. "What inspired you to this? This is best of all," I said. "Why?" said Vesty, glowing and beautiful. "Because now I see again that you are 'Vesty.' And my Lady of M---- was a possible dream always. But Vesty seemed unattainable. "That rose color," I added, looking at her cheeks, "I never saw anywhere except at certain sunsets--you know where." For we of the Basin--however wilfully inclined sometimes, as Captain Pharo--at heart bow down to our wives, and make love to them, long, long after we are married: quite, indeed, until death do us part, as all true Basins should. "Paul!" said Vesty. Now "Paul" was really my name, with considerable before and after it, but never mind all that. "Paul!" "Well?" I said. Confused with the rose-color blushes: "I forgot," she murmured, "what I was going to say." No, she had not forgotten it! Her face was eloquent; only she cannot talk with that fluency with which she can look beautiful and sigh. Especially when she would express anything of deep feeling, she has a way of brushing a speck of dust from my right shoulder, and letting her hand rest there a moment, that tells me worlds, but would not go for much, I admit, on a smart female rostrum. But "Paul!" that voice creeps to me at all times, for counsel, for sympathy; comes impulsively, that is the best of it--comes ever impulsively. I do not know why I am so blessed among my fellows! Just as the lad comes to me--he, too, of the highest breeding. I never saw a look of wonder or shrinking on his face; and once, in an illness that he had he clung to me, cried for me, even above his mother.