Had I a palette I could match the blue of the _peignoir_ with the
faint grey sky. I could make a picture out of that dusky suburb. Had I
a pen I could write verses about these people of old time, but the
picture would be a shrivelled thing compared with the dream, and the
verses would limp. The moment I sought a pen the pleasure of the
meditation, which is still with me, which still endures, would vanish.
Better to sit by my window and enjoy what remains of the mood and the
memory. The mood has nearly passed, the desire of action is
approaching.... I would give much for another memory, but memory may
not be beckoned, and my mind is dark now, dark as that garden; the
swaying, fan-like bough by my window is nearly one mass of green; the
last sparrow has fallen asleep. I hear nothing.... I hear a horse
trotting in the Strand.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LOVERS OF ORELAY
I had come a thousand miles--rather more, nearly fifteen hundred--in
the hope of picking up the thread of a love story that had got
entangled some years before and had been broken off abruptly. A
strange misadventure our love story had been; for Doris had given a
great deal of herself while denying me much, so much that at last, in
despair, I fled from a one-sided love affair; too one-sided to be
borne any longer, at least by me.
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