from being tempted by this apple of Eve, and partly because recent
overwork had tired me, but chiefly for her sake, and not to thwart at the
outset her kindly-meant ambitions for me, I kissed the hand of my Aunt
Carola and set forth to Kings Port.

"Come back one of us," was her parting benediction.



II: I Vary My Lunch


Thus it was that I came to sojourn in the most appealing, the most
lovely, the most wistful town in America; whose visible sadness and
distinction seem also to speak audibly, speak in the sound of the quiet
waves that ripple round her Southern front, speak in the church-bells on
Sunday morning, and breathe not only in the soft salt air, but in the
perfume of every gentle, old-fashioned rose that blooms behind the high
garden walls of falling mellow-tinted plaster: Kings Port the
retrospective, Kings Port the belated, who from her pensive porticoes
looks over her two rivers to the marshes and the trees beyond, the
live-oaks, veiled in gray moss, brooding with memories! Were she my city,
how I should love her!

But though my city she cannot be, the enchanting image of her is mine to
keep, to carry with me wheresoever I may go; for who, having seen her,
could forget her? Therefore I thank Aunt Carola for this gift, and for
what must always go with it in my mind, the quiet and strange romance
which I saw happen, and came finally to share in. Why it is that my Aunt
no longer wishes to know either the boy or the girl, or even to hear