The
place was so poignantly like the garden of a picture that one has
seen as a child, and remembered as a place past all speech
beautiful, and yet failed ever to realize in after years, or to make
any one remember, or, save fleetingly in dreams to see once more,
since the picture-book is never, never chanced upon again. Sometimes
he had dreamed of a great sunny plain, with armies marching;
sometimes he had awakened at hearing the chimes, and fancied
sleepily that it was infinite music; sometimes, in the country in
the early morning, he had had an unreasonable, unaccountable moment
of perfect happiness: and now the fugitive element of them all
seemed to have been crystallized and made his own in that floating
walk down the wooded terraces of this unknown world. And yet he
could not have told whether the element was contained in that
beauty, or in his thought of Olivia.
At last they emerged upon a narrow, grassy terrace where white steps
mounted to a wide parapet. Jarvo ran up the steps and turned:
"Behold Med, adon," he said modestly, as if he had at that moment
stirred it up in a sauce-pan and baked it before their astonished
eyes.
Pages:
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181