We had now come to a point where two paths diverged, and the reading traveller, always economical of time, opened his book where he had last turned down the leaf, and disappeared round the corner.
I never saw him again; but his theory amused me, and, as trifles will sometimes do even in the gravest matters, decided me. So the result of all my hopes and reflections was, that I went back to England and to the student life that had been the dream of my youth.
CHAPTER LV.
MY BIRTHDAY.
Three years of foreign travel, and five of retirement at home, brought my twenty-ninth birthday. I was still young, it is true; but how changed from that prime of early manhood when I used to play Romeo at midnight to Hortense upon her balcony! I looked at myself in the glass that morning, and contemplated the wearied, bronzed, and bearded face which
"...seared by toil and something touched by time,"
now gave me back glance for glance. I looked older than my age by many years. My eyes had grown grave with a steadfast melancholy, and streaks of premature silver gleamed here and there in the still abundant hair which had been the solitary vanity of my youth.
"Is she also thus changed and faded?" I asked myself, as I turned away. And then I sighed to think that if we met she might not know me.
For I loved her still; worshipped her; raised altars to her in the dusky chambers of my memory. My whole life was dedicated to her. My best thoughts were hers. My poems, my ambition, my hours of labor, all were hers only! I knew now that no time could change the love which had so changed me, or dim the sweet remembrance of that face which I carried for ever at my heart like an amulet. Other women might be fair, but my eyes never sought them; other voices might be sweet, but my ear never listened to them; other hands might be soft, but my lips never pressed them. She was the only woman in all my world--the only star in all my night--the one Eve of my ruined Paradise. In a word, I loved her--loved her, I think, more dearly than before I lost her.