It was impossible for us not to wonder why the
black shadow of death should have fallen across the white radiant day.
I say "us," for my brother no doubt pondered the coincidence, though
he did not speak his thoughts to me. No one dares to speak such
thoughts; they are the foolish substance of ourselves which we try to
conceal from others, forgetting that we are all alike. The day moved
slowly from afternoon to evening, like a bride hidden within a white
veil, her hands and her veil filled with white blossom; but a black
bird, tiny like a humming-bird, had perched upon a bunch of blossom,
and I seemed to lose sight of the day in the sinister black speck that
had intruded itself upon it. No doubt I could think of something
better were I to set my mind upon doing so, but that is how I thought
the day I walked on the lawn with my brother, ashamed and yet
compelled to talk of what our lives had been during the years that
separated us. How could one be overpowered with grief amid so many
distracting circumstances? Everything I saw was at once new and old. I
had come among my brother and sister suddenly, not having seen them,
as I have said, for many years; this was our first meeting since
childhood, and we were assembled in the house where we had all been
born.
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