Thinking over the scene of the morning, he scarcely dared go at all.  She had not offered her hand; she had expressed no pleasure, either by look or word, at meeting him again.  He had forced her to say, “Come”:  she could do no less when he had just interfered to save her insult, and had begged the boon.

“Insult!” his arm ached to strike another blow, as he remembered the sentence it had cut short.  Of course the fellow had been drinking, but outrage of her was intolerable, whatever madness prompted it.  The very sun must shine more brightly, and the wind blow softly, when she passed by.  Ah me! were the whole world what an ardent lover prays for his mistress, there were no need of death to enjoy the bliss of heaven.

What could he say? what do? how find words to speak the measured feelings of a friend? how control the beatings of his heart, the passion of his soul, that no sign should escape to wound or offend her?  She had bade him to silence:  was he sufficiently master of himself to strike the lighter keys without sounding some deep chords that would jar upon her ear?

He tried to picture the scene of their second meeting.  He repeated again and again her formal title, Miss Ercildoune, that he might familiarize his tongue and his ear to the sound, and not be on the instant betrayed into calling the name which he so often uttered in his thoughts.  He said over some civil, kindly words of greeting, and endeavored to call up, and arrange in order, a theme upon which he should converse.  “I shall not dare to be silent,” he thought, “for if I am, my silence will tell the tale; and if that do not, she will hear it from the throbbings of my heart.  I don’t know though,”—­he laughed a little, as he spoke aloud,—­bitterly it would have been, had his voice been capable of bitterness,—­“perhaps she will think the organism of the poor thing has become diseased in camp and fightings,”—­putting his hand up to his throat and holding the swollen veins, where the blood was beating furiously.

Presently he went down stairs and out to the street, in pursuit of some cut flowers which he found in a little cellar, a stone’s throw from his hotel,—­a fresh, damp little cellar, which smelt, he could not help thinking, like a grave.  Coming out to the sunshine, he shook himself with disgust.  “Faugh!” he thought, “what sick fancies and sentimental nonsense possess me?  I am growing unwholesome.  My dreams of the other night have come back to torment me in the day.  These must put them to flight.”

The fancy which had sent him in pursuit of these flowers he confessed to be a childish one, but none the less soothing for that.  He had remembered that the first day he beheld her a nosegay had decorated his button-hole; a fair, sweet-scented thing which seemed, in some subtle way, like her.  He wanted now just such another,—­some mignonette, and geranium, and a single tea-rosebud.  Here they were,—­the very counterparts of those which he had worn on a brighter and happier day.  How like they were! how changed was he!  In some moods he would have smiled at this bit of girlish folly as he fastened the little thing over his heart; now, something sounded in his throat that was pitifully like a sob.  Don’t smile at him! he was so young; so impassioned, yet gentle; and then he loved so utterly with the whole of his great, sore heart.