"Would you like to?" she had said.
"Yes, do it for me."
One day some months after I cut from her dear head one long thick lock, one half of which was gold and the other half chestnut. I take it out and look at it as I write, and, as when I first cut it, it seems still a symbol of Elizabeth's life, the sun and the shadow, only that the gold was the shadow, and the chestnut was the sun.
The time came when the locks, from crown to tip, were all chestnut—but when it came I would have given the world for them to be gold again; for Elizabeth had said a curious thing when she had given me her promise.
"All right, dear," she had said, "but something tells me that when they are all brown again our happiness will be at an end."
"How long will that take?" I had said, trying to be gay, though an involuntary shudder had gone through me, less at her words than because of the strange conviction of her manner.
"About two years,—perhaps a little more," she said, answering me quite seriously, as she gravely measured the shining tresses, half her body's length, with her eye.