Juliet made me promise when she went out to the
book-club meeting that if I--if you--if it turned out as _you_ wanted, I
would sing that song as a sign--It was just a joke--like my sending her
picture. It was my mistake and I am sorry, and I beg your pardon--I--"
She stopped with a quick catch in her breath, and the darkness round
them seemed to become luminous with the light of hope that broke upon
him within.
"But if there really was no mistake," he began. He could not get
further.
She did not answer, and for the first time her silence was sweeter than
her voice. He lifted her tip-toe in his embrace, but he did not wish her
taller; her yielding spirit lost itself in his own, and he did not
regret the absence of the strong will which he had once imagined hers.
A CIRCLE IN THE WATER.
I.
The sunset struck its hard red light through the fringe of leafless
trees to the westward, and gave their outlines that black definition
which a French school of landscape saw a few years ago, and now seems to
see no longer. In the whole scene there was the pathetic repose which we
feel in some dying day of the dying year, and a sort of impersonal
melancholy weighed me down as I dragged myself through the woods toward
that dreary November sunset.
Presently I came in sight of the place I was seeking, and partly because
of the insensate pleasure of having found it, and partly because of the
cheerful opening in the boscage made by the pool, which cleared its
space to the sky, my heart lifted.
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