Well, this peacock was unlike other peacocks. She was not—eh?—she was not morbid, but she was solitary and reflective and intensely emotional and sentimental. Of course she had two feet and had a voice, but the less said of them the better. She would wander up and down by the lakeside and think of all that might be. She scarcely dreamed that there was to come to her what was her secret heart's desire, but in time it came. She met the Purple Herring. With each of them it was a case of infatuation at first sight.
Now the Purple Herring was almost as much of an exceptional case as the Pale Peacock. He was the only purple herring in all the great lakes, and was practically the King of the Herrings, and was respected as such. Personally, he had in his nature many of the traits of the Pale Peacock. He, too, was emotional, faithful, and impassioned. They loved.
Here was a most unfortunate situation. Naturally, the Purple Herring could not get along very well upon the land, and, naturally too, the Peacock could not flourish in the water. It was not exactly a case of Platonic love; it was a case of hopeless love, in a way, and yet, not altogether hopeless, for they were happy. It came to this, that they made the best of things, and that the Peacock, day after day, would wander along upon the sands which the water lapped, while the Herring would swim along beside her, and they would exchange tender confidences, and that, to amuse her, he would tell her tales, many tales, of the wonders of the vasty deep of the lake. He told her why the fish flies came in autumn and smeared the windows and made slippery the sidewalks of the great city; of how they lay in the mud at the bottom of the lake, like little short sticks, and then finally burst open and came to the surface and floated away into town. He told her of his talk with Mrs. Whitefish, and of how she did not think the spawn was getting along as well as usual. He told her of a thousand things, and they were happy.
They often talked too, this united yet effectually separated pair, of what they saw upon the shores of the placid lake, whose creamy sands, outside the city, sloped down to the water's edge from green fields and waving groves.
Many people walked along the sands, and children played and romped there all day. At sunset the Purple Herring began to look with special interest for the lovers who came in pairs and sat until late, talking, and sometimes in blissful silence while they listened to the soft lapping of the waves upon the shore.
One day the Purple Herring told the Pale Peacock about one of these pairs of lovers, the only pair, he said, which were not happy.
"And I can't imagine why they are not, either," said the Purple Herring.
"Nor can I, although I have not yet heard all you know about them," said the Pale Peacock. "How two lovers who may live together forever, who are not kept from each other by such a fate as separates you and me—how men and women who love each other can be unhappy, is more than I can conjure up by any stretch of fancy!"
"Her name is Agnes," began the Purple Herring, "and when I first saw her she was walking slowly along the shore, back and forth, on a stretch of beach bordering the great park at the head of the lake. The sky was red after sunset, and in the southwest hung the new moon, with a great star over it. She was a beautiful lady, but she looked perplexed and a little sad even on that first evening. I did not notice the perplexity and sorrow on her sweet face at the time, but afterward I remembered it.
"Suddenly her face was all lighted up by some light that was not of the western sky, nor of the little bent moon, nor the great star. Her eyes shone, her cheeks became pink like the inside of a pink shell, and I looked where her eyes were turned. I saw a man walking rapidly toward her, and I thought, 'Only another pair of lovers!'