Page:Love's trilogy.djvu/148

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138
JULIE'S DIARY

myself, and blinked my eyes to be wide awake. Then I saw him sitting in his shirt sleeves by the little table in front of the balcony door, serious, and deeply occupied in shaving. For a little while I lay quietly enjoying this precious sight. He made the most miserable faces, and handled the razor in dangerous fashion. If he only knew that I am here spying on him, after he, poor man, out of sheer vanity, has got up at an unearthly hour that I should not see him in an unshaven condition. Ugh! there he's cut himself. I laughed so that I shook the bed. He turned, and, like a gutter-snipe, put out his tongue, and said: 'Yes, you just wait till I have finished, and I will give you something to laugh at, you naughty girl.'

Shortly after he came to the bed, pulled my nose, threatened me with a wet sponge, and was quite beside himself with merriment, with smooth, though not unwounded, cheeks.

The second day of our journey had begun. Alas! too soon it ended.

How did we spend it? As the royal children we were, playing together in our kingdom, which, because it was ours, seemed the most beautiful in the world. We ate the food, drank the wine, which seemed better and more delicious than all other earthly food and wine, and we were so in love with each other, that we thought our earlier life counted for nothing. It happened to-day, and yet it is already wrapt in the faint radiance of old memory. I remember our sitting down near the lake having