She shook her head.  “I do not know.  And yet you helped him.”

Haward left the window, and came and sat beside her.  “Yes, I helped him.  I am not sure, but I think I did it because, when first we met, he told me that he hated me, and meant the thing he said.  It is my humor to fix my own position in men’s minds; to lose the thing I have that I may gain the thing I have not; to overcome, and never prize the victory; to hunt down a quarry, and feel no ardor in the chase; to strain after a goal, and yet care not if I never reach it.”

He took her fan in his hand, and fell to counting the slender ivory sticks.  “I tread the stage as a fine gentleman,” he said.  “It is the part for which I was cast, and I play it well with proper mien and gait.  I was not asked if I would like the part, but I think that I do like it, as much as I like anything.  Seeing that I must play it, and that there is that within me which cries out against slovenliness, I play it as an artist should.  Magnanimity goes with it, does it not, and generosity, courtesy, care for the thing which is, and not for that which seems?  Why, then, with these and other qualities I strive to endow the character.”

He closed the fan, and, leaning back in his chair, shaded his eyes with his hand.  “When the lights are out,” he said; “when forever and a night the actor bids the stage farewell; when, stripped of mask and tinsel, he goes home to that Auditor who set him his part, then perhaps he will be told what manner of man he is.  The glass that now he dresses before tells him not; but he thinks a truer glass would show a shrunken figure.”

He sat in silence for a moment; then laughed, and gave her back her fan.  “Am I to come to Westover, Evelyn?” he asked.  “Your father presses, and I have not known what answer to make him.”

“You will give us pleasure by your coming,” she said gently and at once.  “My father wishes your advice as to the ordering of his library; and you know that my pretty stepmother likes you well.”

“Will it please you to have me come?” he asked, with his eyes upon her face.

She met his gaze very quietly.  “Why not?” she answered simply.  “You will help me in my flower garden, and sing with me in the evening, as of old.”

“Evelyn,” he said, “if what I am about to say to you distresses you, lift your hand, and I will cease to speak.  Since a day and an hour in the woods yonder, I have been thinking much.  I wish to wipe that hour from your memory as I wipe it from mine, and to begin afresh.  You are the fairest woman that I know, and the best.  I beg you to accept my reverence, homage, love; not the boy’s love, perhaps; perhaps not the love that some men have to squander, but my love.  A quiet love, a lasting trust, deep pride and pleasure”—­

At her gesture he broke off, sat in silence for a moment, then rising went to the window, and with slightly contracted brows stood looking out at the sunshine that was slipping away.  Presently he was aware that she stood beside him.