You had thought after your gay experiences of the world to meet her with a kind condescension, as an old friend of Nelly’s.  But there is that in her eye which forbids all thought of condescension.  There is that in her air which tells of a high womanly dignity, which can only be met on equal ground.  Your pride is piqued.  She has known—­she must know your history; but it does not tame her.  There is no marked and submissive appreciation of your gifts as a man of the world.

She meets your happiest compliments with a very easy indifference; she receives your elegant civilities with a very assured brow.  She neither courts your society, nor avoids it.  She does not seek to provoke any special attention.  And only when your old self glows in some casual kindness to Nelly, does her look beam with a flush of sympathy.

This look touches you.  It makes you ponder on the noble heart that lives in Madge.  It makes you wish it were yours.  But that is gone.  The fervor and the honesty of a glowing youth is swallowed up in the flash and splendor of the world.  A half-regret chases over you at nightfall, when solitude pierces you with the swift dart of gone-by memories.  But at morning the regret dies in the glitter of ambitious purposes.

The summer months linger; and still you linger with them.  Madge is often with Nelly; and Madge is never less than Madge.  You venture to point your attentions with a little more fervor; but she meets the fervor with no glow.  She knows too well the habit of your life.

Strange feelings come over you,—­feelings like half-forgotten memories,—­musical, dreamy, doubtful.  You have seen a hundred faces more brilliant than that of Madge; you have pressed a hundred jewelled hands that have returned a half-pressure to yours.  You do not exactly admire; to love you have forgotten; you only—­linger!

It is a soft autumn evening, and the harvest-moon is red and round over the eastern skirt of woods.  You are attending Madge to that little cottage-home where lives that gentle and doting mother, who, in the midst of comparative poverty, cherishes that refined delicacy which never comes to a child but by inheritance.

Madge has been passing the day with Nelly.  Something—­it may be the soft autumn air, wafting toward you the freshness of young days—­moves you to speak as you have not ventured to speak, as your vanity has not allowed you to speak before.

“You remember, Madge, (you have guarded this sole token of boyish intimacy,) our split sixpence?”

“Perfectly;” it is a short word to speak, and there is no tremor in her tone,—­not the slightest.

“You have it yet?”

“I dare say I have it somewhere;”—­no tremor now; she is very composed.

“That was a happy time;”—­very great emphasis on the word happy.

“Very happy;”—­no emphasis anywhere.

“I sometimes wish I might live it over again.”