He saw her again as she had been one moonlight evening as the two
stood together by the sluice of the stream, among the stillness of the
woods below the village, with all fairyland about them and in their
hearts. She had thrown a wrap about her head and stolen down there by
devious ways, according to the appointment, meeting him, as was
arranged, as he came out from dinner with all the glamour of the Great
House about him, in his evening dress, buckled shoes, and
knee-breeches all complete. How marvelous she had been then--a sweet
nymph of flesh and blood, glorified by the moon to an ethereal
delicacy, with the living pallor of sun-kissed skin, her eyes looking
at him like stars beneath her shawl. They had said very little; they
had stood there at the sluice gate, with his arm about her, and
herself willingly nestling against him, trembling now and again;
looking out at the sheeny surface of the slow flowing stream from
which, in the imperceptible night breeze, stole away wraith after
wraith of water mist to float and lose themselves in the sleeping
woods.
Or, once more, clearer than all else he remembered how he had watched
her, himself unseen, delaying the delight of revealing himself, one
August morning, scarcely three weeks ago, as she had come down the
road that ran past the house, again in her sun-bonnet and print dress,
with the dew shining about her on grass and hedge, and the haze of a
summer morning veiling the intensity of the blue sky above. He had
called her then gently by name, and she had turned her face to him,
alight with love and fear and sudden wonder.... He remembered even now
with a reflection of memory that was nearly an illusion the smell of
yew and garden flowers.
This, then, had been the dream; and today the awakening and the end.
That end was even more terrible than he had conceived possible on that
horrible Friday morning last week, when he had opened the telegram
from her father.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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