'Yes,' he repeated; 'I was in love with her. I have never been in love
with any other woman. It seems ridiculous for an old man to say it,
but I am in love with her still. An old man? Are we ever really old?
Our body grows old, our skin wrinkles, our hair turns white; but the
mind, the spirit, the heart? The thing we call "I"? Anyhow, not a day,
not an hour, passes, but I think of her, I long for her, I mourn for
her. You knew her--you knew what she was. Do you remember her playing?
Her wonderful eyes? Her beautiful pale face? And how the hair grew
round her forehead? And her talk, her voice, her intelligence! Her
taste, her instinct, in literature, in art--it was the finest I have
ever met.'

'Yes, yes, yes,' Mrs. Kempton said slowly. 'She was a rare woman. I
knew her intimately,--better than any one else, I think. I knew all
the unhappy circumstances of her life: her horrid, vulgar mother; her
poor, dreamy, inefficient father; her poverty, how hard she had to
work. You were in love with her. Why didn't you marry her?'

'My love was not returned.'

'Did you ask her?'

'No. It was needless. It went without saying.'

'You never can tell. You ought to have asked her.'

'It was on the tip of my tongue, of course, to do so a hundred times.
My life was passed in torturing myself with the question whether I had
any chance, in hoping and fearing. But as often as I found myself