"Yes, once in Paris, driving with her husband. This was about five years ago. She didn't see me, although I stood within ten feet of her. He was much older, older than I am now, I should think. Commonplace sort of fellow--see a dozen like him any morning on the Avenue going down to Wall Street. Only her eyes were left, and the fluff of hair about her forehead. She made no impression on me; she wasn't the woman I loved. My memories were of a girl in the garden, all in white, her hair about her shoulders, the molten sunlight splashed here and there, the cool shadow tones between the drippings of gold. And the sound of her voice, and the way she raised her eyes to mine! No, it never comes but once. It is the bloom on the peach, the flush of dawn, never repeated in any other sky; the thrill of the first kiss at the altar, the cry of the first child. Yours! Yours! for ever and ever!
"Talking like a first-class idiot, am I not, old man? But I can't help it. And I get so lonely for it sometimes! Often when you fellows go home and I am left alone at night I draw up by this fire and build castles in the coals. And I see so many things: the figure of a woman, the uplifted hands of children, paths leading to low porticos, gardens with tall flowers along their paths, an arm about my neck and a warm cheek held close to mine. I know I am only half living tucked up here pegging away, and that I ought to shake myself loose and go out into the world more and see what it is made of. In a few years I'll be frozen fast into my habits like an old branch in a stream when the winter's cold strikes it. Only you and the other boys and the fire keep me young."
"Have you never met anybody since, Mac, you cared for?" I had braced myself for that question, wondering how he would take it.
"Yes, once, but she never knew it. I had nothing--why begin over again? It would have turned out like the other--worse. Then I was too young, now I'm too old. Besides, she's on the other side of the water; lives there."
"Oh, I don't know. Women are hard to understand. I never abuse their confidence when they trust me, and they generally do trust me when I get close to them. I seem always to be the big brother to them and so they let themselves go, knowing I won't misunderstand. Women _like_ me, they don't love me--great difference. A lot of men make this mistake, thinking a woman is in love with them when she only wants to be kind. She can't always be on the defensive and still be natural. The greatest relief that can come to one of them is to find that the man whom she wants only as a companion is contented to be that and nothing more and won't take advantage of her confidence. So I say I don't know. She was a human kind of a girl, this one--real human."