Page:The Galaxy, Volume 5.djvu/770

740 a delightful certainty of which fate the gods had vouchsafed me that day. Mrs. Conway took her place, and then began a repast which I can only term paradisiacal; not that coffee and oysters were ever partaken of in the garden of Eden, but because that which really fed me must have been as well known to the first created man, to the earliest fully developed human being, as to me. "Miss Glenn," I said, laughingly, when, at last, I was obliged to go, "I can only use your own word, and say that this entire meal has been 'celestial. "So you enjoy being made much of," she returned, with a gay mockery in her tone, which had no unpleasant element in it. "I could ask nothing better than that it might continue forever," I rejoined, with perhaps more earnestness than she expected, with certainly more truth than she understood. "Yes," she replied, "most persons enjoy petting. I, myself, have a weakness for it—that is, when it is of the kind which suits me," she added, quickly, with a sudden weariness in her face, which was like disgust. She has evidently learned that in this, as in most things, it is not quantity, but quality, which is difficult to obtain. Ah, I might lavish my all of love and devotion upon her, and, if it were not what her nature demands, I know it could be but as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal: it could profit me nothing.

The second morning after this, as I walked down the street, there was such a brightness, almost softness, in the yet cold air, such an indefinable sense of the coming spring, that my blood stirred like the sap in the trees. Hour after hour, as I sat hard at work, the smell of pine trees and of moist earth and leaves kept coming and going to my senses, and carrying my wandering thoughts with it, back to the woods around my childhood's home. About mid-day, who should come bursting in but that dear old John. He caught up my hat, and then laid violent hands on me; and, before I could quite understand what it all meant, I found myself, first in the street, and then seated in a phaeton with Mrs. Conway and Miss Glenn, while John was driving us toward the very woods I had been seeing and feeling as in a dream. I began to comprehend how some persons consider life a boon. I said something of the kind to Miss Glenn. She had been laughing the moment before; but as she heard my words she turned and looked steadily at me, with a wistful, sorrowful envy in her eyes, which literally reproduced the first moment I had ever seen and heard her. "Why do you look at me so?" I asked. "You remind me," she replied, rather hesitatingly, "that there was a time when I, too, held that erroneous opinion."

This is not the only occasion on which the sombre truth, which that first moment showed me so unmistakably, has reappeared upon the bright surface, called up unexpectedly and involuntarily.

On Saturday night there was a lecture, or something of the kind, going on; and our little party was in attendance; except myself. I absolutely could not get off in time. My work has rather gone to the wall lately; but, good heavens! I have toiled long enough and hard enough to deserve a little rest and play. There were letters and papers, though, which no one but I could write, and which must be finished with the week. However, I managed to catch the party as they were leaving the hall, and secured the chance of seeing Miss Glenn home. As we walked through the quiet streets we imperceptibly glided into an almost confidential talk. I said then how keenly I regretted not being able to be with them during the whole evening. "I sometimes think," she answered, "that in small things, as in great ones, the chief lesson life teaches us is that we are not to have that which we really wish for. I used to struggle hard against it, but I have ceased now to kick against the pricks."