Man on the Box by Harold MacGrath (free reads .TXT) 📕

you going away without telling me?"

He was dumb.

Her arms and eyes, uplifted, appealed to heaven. "What shall I say? How shall I make him understand?" she murmured. "You love me, and you ask for nothing? Is it because in spirit my father has committed a crime?"-growing tall and darting a proud glance at him.

"Good heaven, do not believe that!" he cried,

"What am I to believe?"-tapping the ground with her boot so that the spur jingled.

A pause.

"Mr. Warburton, do you know what a woman loves in a man? I will tell you the secret. She loves courage, constancy, and honor, purpose that surmounts obstacles; she loves pursuit; she loves the hour of surrender. Every woman builds a castle of romance and waits for Prince Charming to enter, and once he does, there must be a game of hide and seek. Perhaps I have built my castle of romance, too. I wait for Prince Charming, and-a man comes, dressed as a groom. There has been a game of hide and seek, but somehow he has tripped. Will you not ask me if I love you?"

"No, no! I understand. I do not want your gratitude. You are meeting generosity with generosity. I do not want your gratitude."- brokenly. "I want your love, every thought of your mind, every beat of your heart. Can you give me these, honestly?"

She drew off a glove. Her hand became lost in her bosom. When she drew it forth she extended it, palm upward. Upon it lay a faded, withered rose. Once more she turned her face away.

He was at her side, and the hand and rose were crushed between his two hands.

"Can you give what I ask? Your love, your thoughts, your heart- beats?"

It was her turn to remain dumb.

"Can you?" He drew her toward him perhaps roughly, being unconscious of his strength and the nervous energy which the sight of the rose had called into being.

"Can we give those things which are-already-given?"

Only Warburton and the angels, or rather the angels and Warburton, to get at the chronological order of things, heard her, so low had grown her voice.

You may tell any kind of secret to a horse; the animal will never betray you. Warburton would never tell me what followed; and I am too sensible to hang around the horses in hopes of catching them in the act of talking over the affair among themselves. But I can easily imagine this bit of equine dialogue:

Jane : Did you ever see such foolishness?

Dick : Never! And with all this good grass about!

Whatever did follow caused the girl to murmur: "This is the lover I love; this is the lover I have been waiting for in my castle of romance. I am glad that I have lost all worldly things; I am glad, glad! When did you first learn that you loved me?"

(Old, very old; thousands of years old, and will grow to be many thousand years older. But from woman's lips it is the sweetest question man ever heard.)

"At the Gare du Nord , in Paris; the first time I saw you."

"And you followed me across the ocean?"-wonderingly.

"And when did you first learn that you loved me?" he asked.

(Oh, the trite phrases of lovers' litany.)

"When I saw you in the police-court. Mercy! what a scandal! I am to marry my butler!"

Jane: They are laughing!

Dick: That is better than weeping. Besides, they will probably walk us home. (Wise animal!)

He was not only wise but prophetic. The lovers did walk the horses home. Hand in hand they came back along the road, through the flame and flush of the ripening year. The god of light burned in the far west, blending the brown earth with his crimson radiance, while the purple shadows of the approaching dusk grew larger and larger. The man turned.

"What a beautiful world it is!" he said.

"I begin to find it so," replied the girl, looking not at the world, but at him.

THE END


Postscript:

I believe they sent William back for the saddle-hamper and my jehu's cap.

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Publication Date: 05-21-2008

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