Which of those greedy
fortune-hunters whom my money--my life-blood as you might have thought
it was--attracted to you, did you care to tell that you had ever slipped
out of the little garden gate at Sidon to meet that outcast! Do you
wonder that as the years passed and YOU were happy, I did not choose to
be so forgotten? Do you wonder that when YOU shut the door on the past
I managed to open it again--if only a little way--that its light might
startle you?"
Yet she did not seem startled or disturbed, and remained only looking at
him critically.
"You say that you have suffered," she replied with a smile. "You don't
look it! Your hair is white, but it is becoming to you, and you are a
handsomer man, 'Lige Curtis, than you were when I first met you; you are
finer," she went on, still regarding him, "stronger and healthier
than you were five years ago; you are rich and prosperous, you have
everything to make you happy, but"--here she laughed a little, held
out both her hands, taking his and holding his arms apart in a rustic,
homely fashion--"but you are still the same old 'Lige Curtis! It was
like you to go off and hide yourself in that idiotic way; it was like
you to let the property slide in that stupid, unselfish fashion; it was
like you to get real mad, and say all those mean, silly things to dad,
that didn't hurt him--in your regular looney style; for rich or poor,
drunk or sober, ragged or elegant, plain or handsome,--you're always the
same 'Lige Curtis!"
In proportion as that material, practical, rustic self--which nobody
but 'Lige Curtis had ever seen--came back to her, so in proportion the
irresolute, wavering, weak and emotional vagabond of Sidon came out to
meet it.
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