nursed, cherished, and loved all that she had of sweet and dear, and that
this all was the memory of her childhood in the valley, and of that brief
season when he had been her savior, protector, friend, and playmate. He
learned also--for she was too simple and too glad either to withhold the
information or to know that she had given it--that in her girlish and
innocent imaginings she had made of him a fairy knight, clothing him in a
panoply of power, mercy, and tenderness, and setting him on high, so high
that his very heel was above the heads of the mortals within her ken.

Keen enough in his perceptions, he was able to recognize that here was a
pure and imaginative spirit, strongly yearning after ideal strength,
beauty, and goodness. Given such a spirit, it was not unnatural that,
turning from sordid or unhappy surroundings as a flower turns from shadow
to the full face of the sun, she should have taken a memory of valiant
deeds, kind words, and a protecting arm, and have created out of these a
man after her own heart, endowing him with all heroic attributes; at one
and the same time sending him out into the world, a knight-errant without
fear and without reproach, and keeping him by her side--the side of a
child--in her own private wonderland. He saw that she had done this, and
he was ashamed. He did not tell her that that eleven-years-distant
fortnight was to him but a half-remembered incident of a crowded life, and
that to all intents and purposes she herself had been forgotten. For one
thing, it would have hurt her; for another, he saw no reason why he should
tell her. Upon occasion he could be as ruthless as a stone; if he were so
now he knew it not, but in deceiving her deceived himself. Man of a world
that was corrupt enough, he was of course quietly assured that he could
bend this woodland creature--half child, half dryad--to the form of his
bidding. To do so was in his power, but not his pleasure. He meant to
leave her as she was; to accept the adoration of the child, but to attempt
no awakening of the woman. The girl was of the mountains, and their