ENVOI
I am writing these lines in the rose garden of Saluce, ghostly, even on this warm June day, with the memories and the pictures and the perfumes of the past. How good summer is to the old! And how much kinder even than summer is love.
Down the garden path towards me is coming the form of a woman. Once long ago with the romantic extravagance of youth I pictured this garden, haunted by the forms of lovely women long dead; but not one of those forms was as romantic as this living woman, coming towards me between the bushes of the amber and crimson roses.
How slowly she walks, and, see, she stops now and hesitates—ah, now, she has seen me, and she smiles. Age has not touched her sight, yet she is blind—for she is the only person in the world who cannot see that my hands are tremulous and that my hair is grey.
Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.