The Glory of the Conquered: The Story of a Great LoveGlaspell, Susan
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The Glory of the Conquered: The Story of a Great Love
Glaspell, Susan
Artists -- Fiction; Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Love stories; Married people -- Fiction; Scientists -- Fiction
"Mountains are revolutionary instincts," he said, smiling at her
fancifulness--Ernestine was always fanciful when she was happy.
"Yes, that's it. Sometimes I like the stormy upheavals which change the
whole face of the earth, but this morning it's nice to have just the
little sighs of content. And, dear--now turn around and look this way.
You can't really see the lake at all--but you can tell by looking down
that way that it is there."
"How can you tell, liebchen?" he asked, just to hear her talk.
"Oh, I don't know _how_ you can. It's not scientific knowledge--it's--the
other kind. The trees know that the lake is there."
"Let's walk down to the lake," he said. "I want to feel it on my face.
And oh, liebchen--it's good to have you tell about things like this."
As they walked she told him of all she saw: the people they met, and what
she was sure the people were thinking about. Once she laughed aloud, and
when he asked what she was laughing at, she said, "Oh, that chap we just
passed was amusing. His eyes were saying--'My allowance is all gone and I
haven't a red sou--but isn't it a bully day?'"
"There's no reason why I should be shut out from the world, Ernestine,"
he said vigorously, "when you have eyes for two."
"Why, that's just what I think!" she said, quickly, her voice low, and
her heart beating fast.
The shadows upon the grass, the nursemaids and the babies, the boys and
girls playing tennis, or just strolling around happy to be alive--she
could make Karl see them all. And as they came in sight of the lake she
began telling him how it looked in the distance, how it seemed at first
just a cloud dropped down from the sky, but how, upon coming nearer, it
was not the stuff that clouds are made of, but a live thing, a great live
thing pulsing with joy in the morning sunshine. She told him how some of
it was blue and some of it was green, while some of it was blue wedded to
green, and some of it too elusive to have anything to do with the
spectrum. "And, dearie--it is flirting with the sunlight--flirting
shamefully; I'm almost ashamed for the lake, only it's so happy in its
flirtation that perhaps it is not bothered with moral consciousness. But
it seems to want the sunlight to catch it, and then it seems to want to
get away, and sometimes a sunbeam gets a little wave that stayed too long
and kisses it right here in open day--and isn't it awful--but isn't it
nice?"
In so many ways she told how the lake seemed to her--how it seemed to her
eyes and how it seemed to her heart and how it seemed to her soul, how it
looked, what it said, what it meant; what the clouds thought of it, and
what the sunlight thought of it, what the wind thought of it, what the
dear babies on the shore thought of it, and what it thought of itself.
She could not have talked that way to any one else, but it was so easy
for her heart to talk to Karl's heart. One pair of eyes could do just as
well as two when hearts were tuned like this!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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