For seven Sundays in succession I did not meet them upon their wonted walk.
On the eighth Sunday I saw the dog first, then the man. The latter was looking over the railing. The woman was not with him. Apprehensively I sought with my eyes his face. Much grief and loneliness were depicted there.
Was he or I the greater mourner? I wondered.
I suppose two years passed after that day ere I again beheld the widower—whose name I did not and probably never shall know—upon the bridge. The dog was not with him this time. It was a fine, sunny afternoon in May. Grief was no longer in his face. By his side was a very pretty, animated, rosy little woman whom I had never seen before. They walked close to each other, and she looked with the utmost tenderness into his face. She evidently was not yet entirely accustomed to the wedding-ring which I observed on her finger.
I think that tears came to my eyes at this sight. Those great brown eyes, the plush sack, the lovely face that had borne the impress of sorrow so speedily, had felt death—those might never have existed, so soon had they been forgotten by the one being in the world for whom that face had worn the aspect of a perfect love.
Yet one upon whom those eyes never rested has remembered. And surely the memory of her is mine to wed, since he, whose right was to cherish it, has allowed himself to be divorced from it in so brief a time.
The memory of her is with me always, fills my soul, beautifies my life, makes green and radiant this existence which all who know me think cold, bleak, empty, repellent.
You will not laugh, then, my friend, when I tell you that love is not to me a thing unknown.
So runs a part of the last letter to my father that the old bookkeeper ever wrote.