Home Again

“How do you like my binding?” he asked, when they had ridden awhile in silence.

She looked up with a question.

“The binding of my book, I mean,” he explained.

“It is a good color.”

He felt his hope rather damped.

“Will you let me read a little from it?”

“With pleasure. You shall have an audience in the drawing-room, after luncheon.”

“Oh, Lufa! how could you think I would read my own poems to a lot of people!”

“I beg your pardon! Will the summer-house do?”

“Yes, indeed; nowhere better.”

“Very well! The summer-house, after lunch!”

This was not encouraging! Did she suspect what was coming? and was she careful not to lead the way to it? She had never been like this before! Perhaps she did not like having the book dedicated to her! But there was no mention of her name, or anything to let “the heartless world” know to whom it was offered!

As they approached the house, Walter said,

“Would you mind coming at once to the summer-house?”

“Lunch will be ready.”

“Then sit down in your habit, and come immediately after. Let me have my way for once, Lufa.”

“Very well.”

CHAPTER XXII. THE SUMMER-HOUSE

The moment the meal was over, he left the room, and in five minutes they met at the place appointed—a building like a miniature Roman temple.

“Oh,” said Lufa, as she entered, “I forgot the book. How stupid of me!”

“Never mind,” returned Walter. “It was you, not the book I wanted.”

A broad bench went round the circular wall; Lufa seated herself on it, and Walter placed himself beside her, as near as he dared. For some moments he did not speak. She looked up at him inquiringly. He sunk at her feet, bowed his head toward her, and but for lack of courage would have laid it on her knees.

“Oh, Lufa!” he said, “you can not think how I love you!”

“Poor, dear boy!” she returned, in the tone of a careless mother to whom a son has unburdened his sorrows, and laid her hand lightly on his curls.

The words were not repellent, but neither was the tone encouraging.

“You do not mind my saying it?” he resumed, feeling his way timidly.

“What could you do but tell me?” she answered.

“What could I do for you if you did not let me know! I’m so sorry, Walter!”

“Why should you be sorry? You can do with me as you please!”

“I don’t know about such things. I don’t quite know what you mean, or what you want. I will be as kind to you as I can—while you stay with us.”

“But, Lufa—I may call you Lufa?”

“Yes, surely! if that is any comfort to you.”

“Nothing but your love, Lufa, can be a comfort to me. That would make me one of the blessed!”

“I like you very much. If you were a girl, I should say I loved you.”

“Why not say it as it is?”

“Would you be content with the love I should give a girl? Some of you want so much!”

“I will be glad of any love you can give me. But to say I should be content with any love you could give me, would be false. My love for you is such, I don’t know how to bear it! It aches so! My heart is full of you, and longs for you till I can hardly endure the pain. You are so beautiful that your beauty burns me. Night nor day can I forget you!”

“You try to forget me then?”

“Never. Your eyes have so dazzled my soul that I can see nothing but your eyes. Do look at me—just for one moment, Lufa.”

She turned her face and looked him straight in the eyes—looked into them as if they were windows through which she could peer into the convolutions of his brain. She held her eyes steady until his dropped, unable to sustain the nearness of her presence.

“You see,” she said, “I am ready to do anything I can to please you!”

He felt strangely defeated, rose, and sat down beside her again, with the sickness of a hot summer noon in his soul.

But he must leave no room for mistake! He had been dreaming long enough! What had not Sefton told him!

“Is it possible you do not understand, Lufa, what a man means when he says, ‘I love you’?”

“I think I do! I don’t mind it!”

“That means you will love me again?”

“Yes; I will be good to you.”

“You will love me as a woman loves a man?”

“I will let you love me as much as you please.”

“To love you as much as I please, would be to call you my own; to marry you; to say wife to you; to have you altogether, with nobody to come between, or try to stop my worshiping of you—not father, not mother—nobody!”