Thought of her? Yes, I thought of her occasionally.
Time went by, and I wondered if she were married. What her husband was
like, and why I never wrote. It were surely unkind not to write....
Reader, you know those little regrets. Perhaps life would be all on
the flat without regret. Regret is like a mountaintop from which we
survey our dead life, a mountaintop on which we pause and ponder, and
very often looking into the twilight we ask ourselves whether it would
be well to send a letter or some token. Now we had agreed upon one
which should be used in case of an estrangement--a few bars of
Schumann's melody, "The Nut Bush," should be sent, and the one who
received it should at once hurry to the side of the other and all
difference should be healed. But this token was never sent by me,
perhaps because I did not know how to scribble the musical phrase:
pride perhaps kept her from sending it; in any case five years are a
long while, and she seemed to have died out of my life altogether; but
one day the sight of a woman who had known her, brought her before my
eyes, and I asked if Doris married. The woman could not tell me; she
had not seen her for many years; they, too, were estranged, and I went
home saying to myself: "Doris must be married.
Pages:
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171