She is beautiful as old ladies are beautiful. If she wore a lace stomacher, she would make a magnificent Rembrandt—rich browns, tawny gold, and, in the heart of the picture, the spirit of her personality as mellow and pervasive as a flame.
I don't see Viola often nowadays, but what I gained by renouncing a purely personal interest in her has extended itself somehow beyond what we know as the realm of time and space. This sounds rather esoteric, but what I mean is that I am very happy whenever I think of her, whether I am with her or not. I feel very near her though we are separated by a hundred miles; and I should not be surprised if, in the muffled 'Woof! Woof!' of her dreams, she often lives again what I happen to be thinking of at the moment—wonderful runs with Teddy, the cocker spaniel, or the homeric combat with the woodchuck beside Simon Brook.
As I sit thinking of Viola, there happens to come into my mind, by one of those odd associations that have so little logic in them, an apparently trivial incident that took place a day or so ago. A couple of little girls stopped me on Arlington Street, Boston, and asked the way to Marlboro Street. It chanced that I was going to Marlboro Street myself, and I offered to conduct them there, but they were walking in the leisurely way of children, taking in everything on the way, and I soon outstripped them. At the corner of Marlboro Street, however, I turned and waved to them to indicate that this was the street they wanted, and they waved back to show that they understood.
That was apparently the end of the incident; but two or three blocks up Marlboro Street, something impelled me to turn. The children had found the street, they were following safely, they were evidently watching me; for as soon as I turned, they waved again. As I went up the steps of the house where I had an appointment, I looked back for the third time. The children, now become almost fairy-like figures, were still watching me. Up went their hands and up went mine, and across the long length of city street, we waved in greeting and farewell.
I do not know why the incident should have seemed to contain an element of real beauty. I was reminded of George E. Woodberry's poem in which a somewhat similar incident is celebrated. A boy, you remember, while playing, ran heedlessly into the poet, and the poem ends,—
| It was only the clinging touch |
| Of a child in a city street; |
| It hath made the whole day sweet. |
What struck me even more than the beauty of my adventure was the quality of permanence that it seemed to wear. In my under-consciousness, there was something immortal about it. Can it be possible that our casual relations, where love is,—our relations with children, or with strangers whom we shall never see again, or with the lower animals whose span of life is necessarily very limited,—can it be possible that these relations are less ephemeral than we think? Would it be too much to hope that the relation between Viola and myself is a small but permanent addition to the store of worth-while things?
