"
He bowed his head: the only answer he could make.
It was getting late. The sun at this moment passed behind the western
tree-tops. It was the old customary signal for him to go. They suddenly
looked at each other in that shadow.
"I shall always think of you for your last words to me," he said in a thick
voice, rising.
"Some day you will find the woman who will be a candle," she replied sadly,
rising also. Then with her lips trembling, she added piteously:
"Oh, if you ever marry, don't make the mistake of treating the woman as an
ideal Treat her in every way as a human being exactly like yourself! With
the same weakness, the same strug-les, the same temptations! And as you have
some mercy on yourself despite your faults, have some mercy on her despite
hers."
"Must I ever think of you as having been weak and tempted as I have been?"
he cried, the guilty blood rushing into his face in the old struggle to tell
her everything.
"Oh, as for me--what do you know of me!" she cried, laughing. And then more
quickly:
"I have read your face! What do you read in mine?"
He looked long into it:
"All that I have most wished to see in the face of any woman--except one
thing!"
"What is that? But don't tell me!"
She turned away toward the garden gate.
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