“To fall in love!”—said my friend [Annabel] Lee, the while her two eyes and her two white hands, in their expression, their position, told of a thing that is heart-breaking to see.
[XIII
WHEN I WENT TO THE BUTTE HIGH SCHOOL]
“THERE was a time,” I said to my friend Annabel Lee, “when I went to the Butte High School. I think of it now with mingled feelings.”
“You were younger then,” said my friend Annabel Lee.
“I was younger, and in those days I still looked upon life as something which would one day open wide and display wondrous and beautiful things for me. And meanwhile I went every day to the Butte High School. I found it a very interesting place—much more interesting than I have since found the broad world. I was sixteen and seventeen and eighteen, and things were not brilliantly colored, and so I made much with a vivid fancy of all that came in my path.”
“And what do you, now that you are one-and-twenty?” said my friend Annabel Lee.
“I sit quietly,” I replied, “and wish not, and wait not—and look back upon the days in the Butte High School with mingled feelings.”
“Also unawares,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “you still think things relating to that which is one day to open wondrously for you. But, never mind,” she added hastily, as I was about to say something, “tell me about the Butte High School.”