The Cassowary; What Chanced in the Cleft MountainsWaterloo, Stanley
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The Cassowary; What Chanced in the Cleft Mountains
Waterloo, Stanley
Love stories; Railroad travel -- Fiction; Storytelling -- Fiction
They said very little, but they looked into each other's eyes. They
couldn't help that very well. Then the laws of life worked themselves
out. It is a way they have.
What are you going to do with a woman's eyes? Inside the depths of a
woman's eyes, lurking lovingly, sometimes, are all the revelations that
must come when the time comes and reflect themselves into the
looking-glasses God provides to tell us of the thoughts of others. There
are different women and different eyes, of course. We must take our
chances on that.
And, so as said, they did not even refer to the happenings of the day
before or of any of the context of all that had occurred. They did not
refer to the great hound. They talked of nothing but of things
incidental. She asked him when they would probably be released from
their snow imprisonment and he told her that it would be within two
days.
And, so they separated and had practically said nothing.
But eyes, as announced, are the most astonishing things. They had talked
a great deal that morning. As we human beings are made, they are a
little the neatest and finest expression of all there is in life. They
hold and send forth the beaconing flash from every intellectual and
loving light-house in the world. They are, with what they say, the
confessional between any two human beings, man and woman, in the world.
They are the mediums of revelation. No wonder that those who know want
sometimes, foolishly, it may be, to die when to them comes a physical
blindness which may not be remedied.
And this man and woman looked into each other's eyes, he hardly
comprehending at first but having the great consciousness come to him at
last, she doubtless understanding sooner, and even more acutely.
Intelligent fluttering of the heart is what might possibly be said of
her. She was alarmed and yet, from another point of view, entirely
without fear. She realized the situation better than did he. Ever since
the world was first firmly encrusted out of the steaming fog woman has
been the braver of the two in our love affairs.
Exceedingly clever as these two people were, there is no opportunity to
do any exceedingly brilliant work in telling all about them. Brought
down to its last analysis, theirs was but the plain, old-fashioned love
which has stood the test of all the centuries and which, in our modern
English and American times, has the flavor of the hollyhocks which grow
about the front fence and the old-fashioned pinks in the yard and a lot
of other things. We have new ways in other things, but love has not
changed much since the time of Egypt. Doubtless it was about the same
way before.
"What is the day of the week, please," had been Stafford's last
utterance. She did not even reply. She looked back into his eyes and
that look, if it could have been weighed, could have been considered by
nothing but Troy weight, the jeweller's weight, and then it would have
been too coarse for the occasion and the demand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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