She stood there before me kneeling: her skirt touched my face. She was turned toward the door, and her eyes were upon me. They were far away.
I drank her beauty like an immortal wine within a cup of death.
... O sweet beyond song is woman at her Spring! You are life, you are the wrung essence of all life. For you I have made myself an ashen path through the splendor of gardens. For you I have denied my soul all their flung radiance. That I might drink you perfectly. And I am all athirst. My ashen way has dried my mouth, and opened my desire. I am all thirst for you. And I have lost you?
—Mildred, will you see this longing in my mouth, and go?
—Mildred, will you see this death in my eyes, and go?...
—You have gone already. And I am alone.
I have told my story. And, reader, though it has no moral, and though it may have brought you more bewilderment than joy, it has served its primary purpose. It has enabled me once more to live among you. Take the most anguished page, the blackest with my despair; it has been joy for me to write that page, for in the writing I relived it. And where I am, even the darkest human hour in memory is bright. If I suffered, it was because I still could strive: if I despaired it was because I still knew hope. Such are the jewels of man’s world. For man’s world is a playground whither the drab cosmic angels come for holiday. Strife, pain, suspense, anguish of heart and flesh, sacrifice and crime ... these are the raiments of Love. These are the joyous motley of the angels when they make feast on earth.
... I see an evening earlier in my life. I had just returned from my exhilarant years in Europe. It was June, and I was staying with a friend who lived with his wife in the Berkshire Hills of New England. They had been called to a nearby town: I declined their invitation to go along with them. I supped alone in their house. There was cheese redolent of meadows and manure; there was honey that smelt of clover; there were vegetables lightly cooked so that the resilient air of April and of May still lingered in their green.
I sat on the porch alone, smoking my pipe, and watched the sun fall through the scattered hedge of fir trees and dogwood, copper-beech and locust. The air was alive with the acacia scent and with the song of birds. Their voices swarmed the leafage: oriole and grackle, virio, thrush and thrasher. Impudent red-breasts marched across the green: a catbird with its stridence set in tune the melodious symphony of the sweeter birds.