And he had given all this up, and for what, he
asked himself, and why?
He could not answer that now. It was simply because he had been
surfeited with too much content, he replied, passionately. He had not
appreciated how happy he had been. She had been too kind, too
gracious. He had never known until he had quarrelled with her and lost
her how precious and dear she had been to him.
He was at the entrance to the Park now, and he strode on along the
walk, bitterly upbraiding himself for being worse than a criminal--a
fool, a common blind mortal to whom a goddess had stooped.
He remembered with bitter regret a turn off the drive into which they
had wandered one day, a secluded, pretty spot with a circle of box
around it, and into the turf of which he had driven his stick, and
claimed it for them both by the right of discovery. And he recalled
how they had used to go there, just out of sight of their friends in
the ride, and sit and chatter on a green bench beneath a bush of box,
like any nursery maid and her young man, while her groom stood at the
brougham door in the bridle-path beyond. He had broken off a sprig of
the box one day and given it to her, and she had kissed it foolishly,
and laughed, and hidden it in the folds of her riding-skirt, in
burlesque fear lest the guards should arrest them for breaking the
much-advertised ordinance.
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