As in life’s autumn days
Retracing youthful ways
For him on whom life’s length’ning shadows fall!”
“Too true,” he murmured, sadly. “It would almost seem as if the girl wrote with a subtle prescience of this day. How strange the charm she has always had for me, even in her sweet childhood. She loved me then, too, but now I am too old. Sweetheart can not be more than eighteen, while I am thirty-five! Why should I dream of rivaling Cameron Bentley, who has youth, wealth, and good looks to recommend him to her favor?”
It was the first time that he had ever regretted the swift passage of the years that had changed him from an ardent, impetuous boy into a dreamy, thoughtful man. Now he realized in all its intensity the poet’s plaint:
“There are gains for all our losses,
There are balms for all our pains;
But when youth, the dream, departs,
It takes something from our hearts,
And it never comes again.”