The books I had pondered
and the pictures I had seen had estranged me from them, simple souls
that they were; and the consciousness of the injustice of the human
lot made it a pain to me to look into their eyes. So I was glad to be
able to pass behind some bushes, and to escape into the wood without
their perceiving me.
And coming upon pleasant interspaces, pleasanter even than those that
lingered in my memory, I lay down, for, though the days were the first
days of May, the grass was long and warm and ready for the scythe, the
tasselled branches of the tall larches swung faintly in a delicious
breeze, and the words of the old Irish poet came into my mind, "The
wood was like a harp in the hands of a harper." To see the boughs, to
listen to them, seemed a sufficient delight, and I began to admire the
low sky full of cotton-like clouds, and the white flower that was
beginning to light up the little leaves of the hedgerow, and I suppose
it was the May-flower that drew down upon me a sudden thought of the
beloved girl lost to me for ever. My mother's death had closed that
wound a little, but in a moment all my grief reappeared, the wound
gaped again, and it was impossible to stanch the bleeding.
A man cannot lament two women at the same time, and only a month ago
the most beautiful thing that had ever appeared in my life, an idea
which I knew from the first I was destined to follow, had appeared to
me, had stayed with me for a while, and had passed from me.
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