Jeremy stared out into the gray and bleak spaces. “God knows,” he said. “I’ve no way of finding out.” Andy turned and went to the door. “Forget it,” he said. The tone was his sufficient apology.
That night of June, 1914, two years after Marcia Ames’s lips had pressed themselves to his cheek, and he had felt her sobbing breath on his face, Jeremy went again to the bridge where they had stood. A barge filled with young people passed the turn of the lake. A canoe bearing a boy and a girl—how young they seemed to lonely Jeremy, and how enviable!—floated beneath him, and their speech came up to him, dim, tender, and murmurous. Then, sped by a poignant magic, the blended voices of Marcia’s song were wafted to him across the waters:
“Who wins his love shall lose her,
Who loses her shall gain,
For still the spirit wooes her,
A soul without a stain,
And Memory still pursues her
With longings not in vain!”
He could hear in the distance the faint plash of the oars that drove the boat of song. The fairy voices, fainter, sang: