gracious. He had never known until he had quarrelled with her and lost
her how precious and dear she had been to him.

He was at the entrance to the Park now, and he strode on along the
walk, bitterly upbraiding himself for being worse than a criminal--a
fool, a common blind mortal to whom a goddess had stooped.

He remembered with bitter regret a turn off the drive into which they
had wandered one day, a secluded, pretty spot with a circle of box
around it, and into the turf of which he had driven his stick, and
claimed it for them both by the right of discovery. And he recalled
how they had used to go there, just out of sight of their friends in
the ride, and sit and chatter on a green bench beneath a bush of box,
like any nursery maid and her young man, while her groom stood at the
brougham door in the bridle-path beyond. He had broken off a sprig of
the box one day and given it to her, and she had kissed it foolishly,
and laughed, and hidden it in the folds of her riding-skirt, in
burlesque fear lest the guards should arrest them for breaking the
much-advertised ordinance.

And he remembered with a miserable smile how she had delighted him
with her account of her adventure to her mother, and described them as
fleeing down the Avenue with their treasure, pursued by a squadron of
mounted policemen.

This and a hundred other of the foolish, happy fancies they had shared
in common came back to him, and he remembered how she had stopped one
cold afternoon just outside of this favorite spot, beside an open iron
grating sunk in the path, into which the rain had washed the autumn
leaves, and pretended it was a steam radiator, and held her slim