She knew, at last, that
somewhere in that ugly town Dan had dropped his toy; and it was for that
she was crying, not for her own poor doll. Yes, all her life she had had
two griefs to weep for, and two joys to be glad over. She had been really a
double self from her babyhood up--from her babyhood up! It had been always
up, up, up--like a lark that rises to the sun. She had all her life been
rising to the sun, and she was warmed at last.
Then she asked herself if it were happiness, after all, this new
restlessness of hers. The melancholy of the early spring was there--the
roving impulse that comes on April afternoons when the first buds are on
the trees and the air is keen with the smell of the newly turned earth. She
felt that it was time for the spring to come again; she wanted to walk
alone in the woods and to watch the swallows flying from the north. And
again she wanted only to lie close upon the hearth and to hear the flames
leap up the chimney. One of her selves cried to be up and roaming; the
other to turn over on the rug and sleep again.
But gradually her thoughts returned to him, and she went over, bit by bit,
what he had said last evening, asking herself if he had meant much at this
time, or little at another. It seemed to her that she found new meanings
now in things that she had once overlooked. She read words in his eyes
which he had never spoken; and, one by one, she brought back each sentence,
each look, each gesture, holding it up to her remembrance, and laying it
aside to give place to the next.
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