part—you can’t fly—I—alas, poor me! What becomes of the feather-dust when the moth brushes his wings against a butterfly net?”
“What are you making so many words about? You don’t know now, do you?”
“No—that I don’t.’
“Then just be comfortable. Let me look at myself in your eyes.”
“Narcissus, Narcissus!—Do you see yourself well? Does the image flatter you?—Or is it a troubled stream, distorting your fair lineaments.”
“I can’t see anything—only feel you looking—you are laughing at me—What have you behind there—what joke?”
“I—I’m thinking you’re just like Narcissus—a sweet, beautiful youth.”
“Be serious—do.”
“It would be dangerous. You’d die of it, and I—I should”
“What!”
“Be just like I am now—serious.”
He looked proudly, thinking she referred to the earnestness of her love.
In the wood the wind rumbled and roared hoarsely overhead, but not a breath stirred among the saddened bracken. An occasional raindrop was shaken out of the trees; I slipped on the wet paths. Black bars striped the grey tree-trunks, where water had trickled down; the bracken was overthrown, its yellow ranks broken. I slid down the steep path to the gate, out of the wood.
