“Love—­real love—­is never a curse, Kilmeny,” said Eric gravely.  “There is a false love which is a curse.  Perhaps your mother believed it was that which had entered her life and ruined it; and so she made the mistake.  There is nothing in the world—­or in heaven either, as I believe—­so truly beautiful and wonderful and blessed as love.”

“Have you ever loved?” asked Kilmeny, with the directness of phrasing necessitated by her mode of communication which was sometimes a little terrible.  She asked the question simply and without embarrassment.  She knew of no reason why love might not be discussed with Eric as other matters—­music and books and travel—­might be.

“No,” said Eric—­honestly, as he thought, “but every one has an ideal of love whom he hopes to meet some day—­’the ideal woman of a young man’s dream.’  I suppose I have mine, in some sealed, secret chamber of my heart.”

“I suppose your ideal woman would be beautiful, like the woman in your book?”

“Oh, yes, I am sure I could never care for an ugly woman,” said Eric, laughing a little as he sat up.  “Our ideals are always beautiful, whether they so translate themselves into realities or not.  But the sun is going down.  Time does certainly fly in this enchanted orchard.  I believe you bewitch the moments away, Kilmeny.  Your namesake of the poem was a somewhat uncanny maid, if I recollect aright, and thought as little of seven years in elfland as ordinary folk do of half an hour on upper earth.  Some day I shall waken from a supposed hour’s lingering here and find myself an old man with white hair and ragged coat, as in that fairy tale we read the other night.  Will you let me give you this book?  I should never commit the sacrilege of reading it in any other place than this.  It is an old book, Kilmeny.  A new book, savouring of the shop and market-place, however beautiful it might be, would not do for you.  This was one of my mother’s books.  She read it and loved it.  See—­the faded rose leaves she placed in it one day are there still.  I’ll write your name in it—­that quaint, pretty name of yours which always sounds as if it had been specially invented for you—­’Kilmeny of the Orchard’—­and the date of this perfect June day on which we read it together.  Then when you look at it you will always remember me, and the white buds opening on that rosebush beside you, and the rush and murmur of the wind in the tops of those old spruces.”

He held out the book to her, but, to his surprise, she shook her head, with a deeper flush on her face.

“Won’t you take the book, Kilmeny?  Why not?”

She took her pencil and wrote slowly, unlike her usual quick movement.

“Do not be offended with me.  I shall not need anything to make me remember you because I can never forget you.  But I would rather not take the book.  I do not want to read it again.  It is about love, and there is no use in my learning about love, even if it is all you say.  Nobody will ever love me.  I am too ugly.”