I had only gone a few steps along the soft ground when I caught the sound of a light girlish voice; it came from the miniature chasm at the foot of the cliff. I wondered who the child was talking to. But as I came nearer, hearing no voice but hers, I supposed she must be reading aloud.
'Oh no, Roderick,' at last I was close enough to hear, 'I love you passionately, with the love one knows but once. But it is impossible for me to do as you wish. You speak to me of your father; you urge upon me that he would forgive my lowly birth, that he would welcome to his ancestral halls the woman of your choice, whoever she might be. But do not forget that I too have pride, that I too have a duty to perform to my parents.' Then came a change of tone, and a sort of practical parenthesis, hurried through quickly like a stage direction: 'I don't mean my father of course, because he was so clever that he had to think of his art and wasn't like a father at all.' Then her tone became sentimental again: 'But my mother--mamma is worthy to have all the wealth of kings showered at her feet. She is beautiful, and clever, and good; Mr. Maude--indeed everybody, admires and loves her. No, Roderick, I will not allow my mother to become a mere mother-in-law.'
The bathos of the conclusion upset my gravity; I came close to the edge of the pit and looked down. The little maid was not reading, but was sitting by herself on a tree-trunk among the stones, with the dog asleep on the edge of her frock, living in a world of her own, and holding converse with the people there. I crept away as quietly as I could and went back home in an amused but rather rapturous state: the next time I saw my goddess, though, she was devouring slice after slice of bread and jam with prosaic ravenousness at the kitchen door.
And I concluded that at fourteen, even with a face like a flower and a voice like a bird's, 'the love one knows but once' and perfect peace of mind are not incompatible things.
It was Fabian Scott who, being by his profession less of a free agent than any other member of my little circle of friends, fixed the date of their yearly visit. As soon as he made known to me the first day when he would be free, I summoned the rest, and not one of them had ever yet failed me. Fabian wrote to me this year, giving the fifteenth of August as the day on which the closing of the theatre at which he was playing would leave him free.