In the soft light of an afternoon sun, Clarinda sat in an old chair and read a thesis upon love, and she found set forth in this thesis that without love the world would not go around. Further, without love life would be but dross and hideous calamity. She also found therein that men have died from love, and women have languished in torments when it was unrequited.
Even though she was filled with apprehension as she read, she did not wish to eschew love, but was glad she was suffering from its effects.
She imagined that her own particular love was different from the love anybody had ever been consumed with, and she was glad in her heart she was suffering from its effects. She perceived it affected the glint of her hair, and she even thought it affected the beauty of her smile. She knew it affected her eyes, and gave an added color to her cheeks.
At times when she sat by herself, she was filled with fear that the object of her love might fail her—that what she felt might be a dream and not a real condition.
At times this trepidation was so overwhelming she became frightened. It might occur that she would awake from her blissful state and find it was all a mistake. She even thought that it might not have happened—that the man she loved upon a certain night, at a certain place had whispered in her ear that without her love life would be a void.
Clarinda was young and believed in love, and she had not found out that love dies even as the body, and often becomes stale, that more than often it passed from the soul as the miasma from the fetid lake.
Nevertheless, from the time love awoke in her heart, and the man had whispered in her ear and held her close to his breast, day followed day.
Day followed day and the hour of her wedding came, and never once did time stand still. And when it was at hand she awoke with the sun and sprang from her bed as light as the lark, with her hair hanging in golden strands over her shoulders.
Lightly she ran to the window and pushing it open the air rushed in. A luxurious breeze swayed the tree-tops, and the flowers in the fields still covered with dew gave forth untold perfume.
She threw aside the curtains that kept from within the glory of the day, and a flood of light burst into the room. A great gladness came to her heart for there was no cloud in the sky. As if to add a better omen, across the garden in a sycamore tree a bird trilled its morning song.