Page:Greatest Short Stories (1915).djvu/132

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THE MAN IN THE RESERVOIR

nature through all seasons, if thou wilt but be true to one of us, and remain as now a child of nature.’

“A tear sprang to her eye, and then searching her pocket for her card-case, she remembered an engagement to be present at Miss Lawson's opening of fall bonnets at two o'clock!

“And yet, dear, wild, wayward Mary, I thought of her now. You have probably outlived this sort of thing, sir; but I, looking at the moon, as I floated there upturned to her yellow light, thought of the loved being whose tears I knew would flow when she heard of my singular fate, at once so grotesque, yet melancholy to awfulness.

“And how often we have talked, too, of that Carian shepherd who spent his damp nights upon the hills, gazing as I do on the lustrous planet! Who will revel with her amid those old superstitions? Who, from our own unlegended woods, will evoke their yet undetected, haunting spirits? Who peer with her in prying scrutiny into nature's laws, and challenge the whispers of poetry from the voiceless throat of matter? Who laugh merrily over the stupid guesswork of pedants, that never mingled with the infinitude of nature, through love exhaustless and all-embracing, as we have? Poor girl! she will be companionless.

“Alas! companionless forever—save in the exciting stages of some brisk flirtation. She will live hereafter by feeding other hearts with love’s

-G.S.S.— 5 Vol. I
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