Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and WomenMacDonald, George
Science
Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Men and Women
MacDonald, George
Fantasy fiction
I walked on, in the fresh morning air, as if new-born. The only thing
that damped my pleasure was a cloud of something between sorrow and
delight that crossed my mind with the frequently returning thought of
my last night’s hostess. “But then,” thought I, “if she is sorry, I
could not help it; and she has all the pleasures she ever had. Such a
day as this is surely a joy to her, as much at least as to me. And her
life will perhaps be the richer, for holding now within it the memory
of what came, but could not stay. And if ever she is a woman, who knows
but we may meet somewhere? there is plenty of room for meeting in the
universe.” Comforting myself thus, yet with a vague compunction, as if
I ought not to have left her, I went on. There was little to
distinguish the woods to-day from those of my own land; except that all
the wild things, rabbits, birds, squirrels, mice, and the numberless
other inhabitants, were very tame; that is, they did not run away from
me, but gazed at me as I passed, frequently coming nearer, as if to
examine me more closely. Whether this came from utter ignorance, or
from familiarity with the human appearance of beings who never hurt
them, I could not tell. As I stood once, looking up to the splendid
flower of a parasite, which hung from the branch of a tree over my
head, a large white rabbit cantered slowly up, put one of its little
feet on one of mine, and looked up at me with its red eyes, just as I
had been looking up at the flower above me. I stooped and stroked it;
but when I attempted to lift it, it banged the ground with its hind
feet and scampered off at a great rate, turning, however, to look at me
several times before I lost sight of it. Now and then, too, a dim human
figure would appear and disappear, at some distance, amongst the trees,
moving like a sleep-walker. But no one ever came near me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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