He was telling of the East again with a certain felicity of expression—­have we not said he had the gift of words?—­and an abandon of sentiment which showed how thoroughly he confided in the sympathy of his listener.  When we are young we are apt to confide in the sympathy of every listener, and so we make fools of ourselves, and it takes us a long time to live down our reputations.  As we grow older, we believe less and less in its reality.  Perhaps by and by we do not trust to anybody’s sympathy, not even our own.

“We have an old country place,” he was saying; “it belonged to my grandfather.  My grandfather came by it when the little town was very small indeed, so he built an old-fashioned stone house and surrounded it with large grounds.”  He was seeing the stone house and the large grounds with that new inner observation which he had just discovered, and he was trying to the best of his ability to tell what he saw.  After a little he spoke more rhythmically.  Many might have thought he spoke sentimentally, because with feeling; but in reality he was merely trying with great earnestness for expression.  A jarring word would have brought him back to his everyday mood, but for the time being he was wrapt in what he saw.  This is a condition which all writers, and some lovers, will recognise.  “Now the place is empty—­except in summer—­except that we have an old woman who lives tucked away in one corner of it.  I lived there one summer just after I finished college.  Outside my window there was an apple tree that just brushed against the ledge; there were rose vines, the climbing sort, on the wall; and then, too, there was a hickory tree that towered ’way over the roof.  In the front yard is what is known all over town as the ‘big tree,’ a silver maple, at least twice as tall as the house.  It is so broad that its shade falls over the whole front of the place.  In the back is an orchard of old apple trees, and trellises of big blue grapes.  On one side is a broad lawn, at the back of which is one of the good old-fashioned flower gardens that does one good to look at.  There are little pink primroses dotting the sod, sweet-william, lavender, nasturtiums, sweet peas, hollyhocks, bachelor’s buttons, portulaca, and a row of tall sunflowers, the delight of a sleepy colony of hens.  I learned all the flowers that summer.”  He clasped his hands comfortably back of his head and looked at her.  She was gazing out over the Bad Lands to the East.  “In the very centre, as a sort of protecting nurse to all the littler flowers,” he went on, “is a big lilac bush, and there the bees and humming birds are thick on a warm spring day.  There are plenty of birds too, but I didn’t know so many of them.  They nested everywhere—­in the ‘big tree,’ the orchard, the evergreens, the hedges, and in the long row of maple trees with trunks as big as a barrel and limbs that touch across the street.”

“It must be beautiful!” said the girl quietly without looking around.