"Have you read some of the books?" my new friend asked me as soon as we met.
"One of the most beautiful passages is that in which he walks through the waving corn-field with his young wife."
"Yes, but I believe he must have been a horrible man."
He pulled his soft hat over his forehead, gave me a strange look and smiled.
We met almost every day, generally in the morning when I took the children to school and he went to his office. We rode a little way together in the tram-car, then I got out with the children and he went on. During these few minutes we carried on jumpy conversations, based upon an incident, an idea, or a poem of mine. We talked on dispassionately as it seemed, until we stopped abruptly as if afraid that we had said too much.
By-and-by I began to think of him whether I saw him or not; his face, his figure rose like a blazing question from the midst of the strange, wistful dreams that I had dreamt all my life, and something that had lain within me, dull and senseless like a trance, woke, wondered, and trembled into joy.
Once I did not see him for two whole days, and my heart grew so filled with longing that I wrote a letter to him. Not that I wished to see him or anything like it. No. What I put down on the paper were thoughts that had fallen into my soul, rich, like the raindrops that fall down into a field--visions of such rare, exquisite beauty, that I longed to share them with someone.
I was most anxious to see him next day, but did not meet him, nor the next day, nor the next; on the fourth day, at last.... My first impulse was to run and meet him, but it was arrested by a sweet bewilderment that took hold of me whenever I knew him to be near. It seemed as if he wished to hurry on without taking any notice of me, but then he hesitated, stopped, and lifted his hat. I was struck by the strange coolness of his behaviour, and my heart ached within me.
"How is it," I asked him, "that we see so little of each other?"
He drew a deep breath and looked away from me.
"Because it would be very unwise to see more of each other."
"Because," he said at last, "there are wolves in sheep's clothing."
"Of a wolf that runs about in sheep's clothing and whom you trust."
The meaning of his words dawned on me at last, but, filled with a happy, deep-felt trust, I shook my head.