“If the days of a life, Annabel Lee,” I said, “are made bright because of two other lives that are dear to it, and if the life happens upon a day when the thought of the two whom it loves makes its own heart like lead, then what can there be to smooth away its weariness, in heaven above, in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth?”
“Foolish life,” said my friend Annabel Lee. “There is no pain in Japan like what comes of loving some one or some thing. And if the some one or the some thing is the only thing the life can call its own, then woe to it. The things it needs are three: a Lodging Place in heaven above; a Bit of Hardness in the earth beneath; a Last Resort in the waters under the earth. These three—but no life has ever had them.”
“In the end,” I said, “when all wide roadways come together, and all heavy hearts are alert to know what will happen, then will there not indeed be one grand adjustment, and life and all become at once magnificently relative?”
“Never; it can’t be so. Nothing is relative,” said Annabel Lee, on a day that I felt depressed.
[X
MINNIE MADDERN FISKE]
TO-DAY my friend Annabel Lee and I went to the theater and we saw a wonderful and fascinating woman with long dark-red hair upon the stage.
She is attractive, that red-haired woman—adorably attractive. And she reminds one of many things.
Annabel Lee was greatly interested in her acting, and was charmed with herself—and so was I.
“Do you suppose she finds life very delightful?” I said to my friend.