Page:The cream of the jest; a comedy of evasions (IA creamofjestcomed00caberich).pdf/247

 *it might be that unwittingly I traveled toward your home. I could never pass a walled garden where green tree-tops showed without suspecting, even while I shrugged to think how wild was the imagining, that there was only the wall between us. I did not know the color of your eyes, but I knew what I would read there. And for a fevered season I appeared to encounter many women of earth who resembled you—"

"All women resemble me, Horvendile. Whatever flesh they may wear as a garment, and however time-frayed or dull-hued or stained by horrible misuse that garment may seem to be, the wearer of that garment is no less fair than I, could any man see her quite clearly. Horvendile, were that not true, could our great Author find anywhere a woman's body which wickedness and ugliness controlled unchecked, all the big stars which light the universe, and even the tiny sun that our earth spins about, would be blown out like unneeded candles, for the Author's labor would have been frustrated and misspent."

"Yes; I know now that this is true See, Ettarre! Yonder woman is furtively coloring her