irrealities and must now abide by your choice.”  Thus the St. Michael had spoken in a dream in the troubled hours before daybreak, and when Emma went to her den late the next morning she confronted him and admitted, “You are right, St. Michael.  It’s all true.”  That afternoon Crocker was coming for tea, and if her New York aunts could have known, even they would have granted that, for the second time in a thoroughly selfish life, Emma was displaying capacities for self-sacrifice.

As Emma and Crocker shook hands that afternoon, one might see that both had aged a little, but he most.  Something of the appealing boyishness had gone out of his eyes.  He had become her contemporary.  A certain moral advantage, too, had passed to his side and she, whose prerogative it had been to take the leading part, now waited for him to begin.  As if on honour to do nothing abruptly, he sketched his year for her—­his sports and committees, his kinsfolk and hers; their fresh, invigorating, half-made land.  She listened almost in silence until he turned to her and said: 

“With me, Emma, it is and always will be the same.  You know that.  Has anything changed with you?”

“I don’t think so, Crocker.  How can I tell?  I’m glad you’re here, in spite of the shabby trick I’ve played you.  Let me say just that I’m heartily glad to see an old friend.”

“No, I must have more than that or less.  I want much more than that.”

“You want too much.  You want more than I can give to anybody.  O!  Why can’t you see it all?  You are alive, even here in Florence but, I, I am no longer a real person that can love or be loved.  Can’t you see that I am only a sensibility that absorbs the sweetness of this valley, a mere bundle of scruples and fears, a weather-cock veering with the talk of the rest of them?  Think of that and take back what you have thought about me.”

“Emma, you admit a need, and that is very sweet to me.  You want some one to strengthen you against all this that you call the valley.  Mightn’t that helper be I?”

“You shan’t be committed to anything so hopeless.”

“It isn’t as hopeless as it seems.  The strength of the valley is only in its weakness, and we shall be strong together.”

“I have forgotten how to be strong, for years I have only been clever.”

“You’d be dull enough with me as you well know.  I can do that for both.  But don’t talk as if there were some fate between us.  There can be none except your indifference, and I believe you do care a little and will more.”

“Of course, I care, Crocker, but not as you wish.  You have refreshed me in this opiate air.  You have represented the real country I have exchanged for this illusion, the real life I might have lived had I been braver or more fortunate.  But you can have no part in what I have come to be.  Go, for both our sakes.”

“Not for any such reason.  I can’t surrender my happiness for a phrase; I can’t leave you to these delusions about yourself.”