Short stories; United States -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
But with a steady pressure on his arm she compelled him to walk on by
her side. Then she said, in a soft, low voice, as if a little awed by
what she were telling, while at the same time she nestled nearer his
side, "I had such a sad dream last night, and your strange talk reminds
me of it. It seemed as if we were old and white-haired and stooping,
and went wandering about, still together, but not married, lonely and
broken. And I woke up feeling you can't think how dreary and sad,--
as if a bell had tolled in my ears as I slept; and the feeling was so
strong that I put my fingers to my face to find if it was withered; and
when I could not tell certainly, I got up and lit my lamp and looked in
the glass; and my face, thank God! was fresh and young; but I sat on my
bed and cried to think of the poor old people I had left behind in my
dream."
Mabel had so fallen into the spirit of her part that she was really
crying as she ended. Her tears completed Mr. Morgan's mental confusion,
and he absolutely did not know whom he was addressing or where he was
himself, as he cried, "No, no, Mary! Don't cry! It shall not be; it
shall never be."
Lightly withdrawing her hand from his arm, she glided like a sprite from
his side, and was lost in the shadows, while her whispered words still
sounded in his ear, "Good-by for thirty years!"
A moment after, three notes, clear as a bird's call, sounded from the
direction whither she had vanished, and Miss Rood's companion, breaking
off short a remark on the excessive dryness of the weather, bowed
awkwardly and also disappeared among the shadows.
When Miss Rood laid her hand on Mr. Morgan's arm to recall him to the
fact that they were now alone together, he turned quickly, and his
eyes swept her from head to foot, and then rested on her face with an
expression of intense curiosity and a wholly new interest, as if he were
tracing out a suddenly suggested resemblance which overwhelmed him with
emotion. And as he gazed, his eyes began to take fire from the faded
features on which they had rested so many years in mere complacent
friendliness, and she instinctively averted her face.
Long intimacy had made her delicately sensitive to his moods, and when
he drew her arm in his and turned to walk, although he had not uttered a
word, she trembled with agitation.
"Mary, we have had an extraordinary experience to-night," he said.
The old dreaminess in his voice, as of one narcotized or in a trance,
sometimes a little forced, as of one trying to dream, to which she had
become accustomed, and of which in her heart of hearts she was very
weary, was gone. In its place she recognized a resonance which still
further confused her with a sense of altered relations. His polarity had
changed: his electricity was no longer negative, but positive.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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