... O loved Diana of the Silent Places, my
love goes with you always, and for ever, strong, sweet goddess of my
life.
... Two years!"
TO THE READER
Here then, do I end this book, because this is the Book of Diana and
she is gone out of my life.
So do I lay down my pen for a while, uneasily conscious of my
narrative's many imperfections and greatly fearing that I have fallen
very far short in my description of Diana.
But what work of man may hope to be utterly perfect? And who shall
recapture the vanished glory of the dream?
Here, then, do I let fall the curtain; when it rises, the world and I
shall be two years older, two years wiser, two years better, or the
worse.
_Book Two_
SHADOW
CHAPTER I
THE INCIDENTS OF AN EARLY MORNING WALK
I remember waking to find myself very miserable in a ghastly dawn,
where guttering candles flickered in their sockets, casting an
unearthly light upon bottles, silverware, and more bottles that stood
or lay amidst overturned and broken glasses; an unseemly jumble that
littered a long table whose rumpled cloth was plentifully besplashed
with spilled wine and flanked by empty chairs.
Into my drugged consciousness stole a sound that might have been wind
in trees, or a mill race, or some industrious artisan busied with a
saw, yet which I knew could be none of these, and my drowsy puzzlement
grew. Therefore I roused myself with some vague notion of solving this
mystery and turned to behold in this ghastly light a ghostly face; a
handsome face, but very stern, square-chinned, black-browed, aquiline,
scowling upon the dawn.
Pages:
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326