The little thing was licking
his hand, and the old lawyer's face was softened and glowing as he
nursed it and coaxed it with crumbs. As he looked, St. George warmed
to them all in new fellowship and, too, in swift self-reproach; for
in what had seemed to him but "broad lines and comic masks" he
suddenly saw the authority and reality of homely hearts. The better
and more intimate names for everything which seemed now within his
grasp were more important than Yaque itself. He remembered, with a
thrill, how his mother had been wont to tell him that a man must
walk through some sort of fairy-land, whether of imagination or of
the heart, before he can put much in or take much from the
market-place. And lo! this fairy-land of his finding had
proved--must it not always prove?--the essence of all Reality.
His eyes went to Olivia's face in a flash of understanding and
belief.
"Don't you see?" he said, quite as if they two had been talking what
he had thought.
She waited, smiling a little, thrilled by his certainty of her
sympathy.
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