The lights make glistening
circles on the wet pavement. A figure, dressed in gaudy rags, slinks by,
keeping close against the wall. Its back is towards me, and I do not see
its face. Another figure glides from out the shadows. I look upon its
face, and I see it is the face that the woman's eyes gazed up into and
worshipped long ago, when my dream was just begun. But the fairness and
the purity are gone from it, and it is old and evil, as the woman's when
I looked upon her last. The figure in the gaudy rags moves slowly on.
The second figure follows it, and overtakes it. The two pause, and speak
to one another as they draw near. The street is very dark where they
have met, and the figure in the gaudy rags keeps its face still turned
aside. They walk together in silence, till they come to where a flaring
gas-lamp hangs before a tavern; and there the woman turns, and I see that
it is the woman of my dream. And she and the man look into each other's
eyes once more.
* * * * *
In another dream that I remember, an angel (or a devil, I am not quite
sure which) has come to a man and told him that so long as he loves no
living human thing--so long as he never suffers himself to feel one touch
of tenderness towards wife or child, towards kith or kin, towards
stranger or towards friend, so long will he succeed and prosper in his
dealings--so long will all this world's affairs go well with him; and he
will grow each day richer and greater and more powerful.
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