The soul of his love had gone
from the room and from the picture and from his dreams. When he
tried to think of the Alice he loved he saw, not the shadowy
spirit occupant of the west gable, but the young girl who had
stood under the pine, beautiful with the beauty of moonlight, of
starshine on still water, of white, wind-swayed flowers growing in
silent, shadowy places. He did not then realize what this meant:
had he realized it he would have suffered bitterly; as it was he
felt only a vague discomfort--a curious sense of loss and gain
commingled.
He saw her again that afternoon on her way home. She did not
pause by the garden but walked swiftly past. Thereafter, every
day for a week he watched unseen to see her pass his home. Once a
little child was with her, clinging to her hand. No child had
ever before had any part in the shy man's dream life. But that
night in the twilight the vision of the rocking-chair was a girl
in a blue print dress, with a little, golden-haired shape at her
knee--a shape that lisped and prattled and called her "mother;"
and both of them were his.
It was the next day that he failed for the first time to put
flowers in the west gable. Instead, he cut a loose handful of
daffodils and, looking furtively about him as if committing a
crime, he laid them across the footpath under the pine.
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