Mr. Filmore’s house lay not more than half a mile beyond our own gates, and whenever I knew my brother was gone in another direction, I went there for the chance of finding Bertha at home.  Later on in the day I walked thither.  By a rare accident she was alone, and we walked out in the grounds together, for she seldom went on foot beyond the trimly-swept gravel-walks.  I remember what a beautiful sylph she looked to me as the low November sun shone on her blond hair, and she tripped along teasing me with her usual light banter, to which I listened half fondly, half moodily; it was all the sign Bertha’s mysterious inner self ever made to me.  To-day perhaps, the moodiness predominated, for I had not yet shaken off the access of jealous hate which my brother had raised in me by his parting patronage.  Suddenly I interrupted and startled her by saying, almost fiercely, “Bertha, how can you love Alfred?”

She looked at me with surprise for a moment, but soon her light smile came again, and she answered sarcastically, “Why do you suppose I love him?”

“How can you ask that, Bertha?”

“What! your wisdom thinks I must love the man I’m going to marry?  The most unpleasant thing in the world.  I should quarrel with him; I should be jealous of him; our menage would be conducted in a very ill-bred manner.  A little quiet contempt contributes greatly to the elegance of life.”

“Bertha, that is not your real feeling.  Why do you delight in trying to deceive me by inventing such cynical speeches?”

“I need never take the trouble of invention in order to deceive you, my small Tasso”—­(that was the mocking name she usually gave me).  “The easiest way to deceive a poet is to tell him the truth.”

She was testing the validity of her epigram in a daring way, and for a moment the shadow of my vision—­the Bertha whose soul was no secret to me—­passed between me and the radiant girl, the playful sylph whose feelings were a fascinating mystery.  I suppose I must have shuddered, or betrayed in some other way my momentary chill of horror.

“Tasso!” she said, seizing my wrist, and peeping round into my face, “are you really beginning to discern what a heartless girl I am?  Why, you are not half the poet I thought you were; you are actually capable of believing the truth about me.”

The shadow passed from between us, and was no longer the object nearest to me.  The girl whose light fingers grasped me, whose elfish charming face looked into mine—­who, I thought, was betraying an interest in my feelings that she would not have directly avowed,—­this warm breathing presence again possessed my senses and imagination like a returning siren melody which had been overpowered for an instant by the roar of threatening waves.  It was a moment as delicious to me as the waking up to a consciousness of youth after a dream of middle age.  I forgot everything but my passion, and said with swimming eyes—­