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
On the hill-top she stopped, standing straight, breathing deep, revelling
in the song of the birds--they were fairly intoxicated with joy at
this morning--listening to the soft murmur of the spring beneath it
all--happy--oh so happy, as she looked off to the far distances. The long
winter had gone, and now the spring had come again--the dear spring she
had always loved!
It was with her too almost an intoxication--the throwing off of gloom,
the taking on of joy. On such a morning nature calls unto her chosen, and
they hear her call, and are glad. As she stood there on her hill-top her
spirit lifted itself up in lyric utterance; her whole being responded to
the songs of the returning birds.
How well Dr. Parkman had planned it! She would go back now and tell Karl
what a great thing it was to be alive, how the spirit was everything, and
could conquer all else. It seemed very easy now. It was all a matter of
getting the spirit right;--how good of Dr. Parkman to think it out like
this.
But there was something a little wrong. She stopped for a minute,
pondering. Now she knew! Karl!--why could he not be here too? All in an
instant she saw it so clearly that she laughed aloud. She was rested
now--ready to tell him--and _this_ the place! She would send for him! Mr.
Ross--or perhaps the doctor himself--would come with him, and here where
it was all so beautiful, where the call of the spring reached them and
made them glad--she would tell him! And then, his spirit strong as hers
was now strong, he would respond to it, be made ready for the fight.
How simple and how splendid! How stupid not to have thought of this
before! And then again she laughed. It would be fun to improve on Dr.
Parkman's idea. That was all very well--but this a thousand times better.
Karl's spirit too needed lifting up;--what could do it as this? It was
true he could not see it with his eyes--but there were so many other ways
of being part of it: the singing of the birds, the scent of the budding
trees, the rich breath of spring upon one's face. And even the vision
should not be lost to him. She would make him see it! She would make him
see the sunlight upon the trees, the roll of that farther hillside--one
did not need to try to forget the park commissioners here!--and then she
would say to him: "See, Karl--even as I can make you see the trees and
that little brook there in the hollow, just as plainly as I can make you
see the sky and the hill come together off there--so plainly will I make
you see the things in the laboratory which belong with your work." She
would prove to him by the picture she drew of these green fields in
spring-time that she could make plain to him all he must see. How
glorious to prove it to him by the spring-time!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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