Left alone with any _one_, my
mouth dried like sand, my tongue clove to my palate, I shook all over as
with a palsy.
With Hildreth Baxter I was straightway, marvellously, at my ease. We
talked of Keats--she seemed to know all of his verse by heart....
Shelley--she quoted his less-known fragments....
"O WORLD! O LIFE! O TIME!--"
"O world! O life! O time!
On whose last steps I climb,
Trembling at that where I had stood before;
When will return the glory of your prime?
No more--Oh, never more!
"Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight;
Fresh spring, and summer, and the winter hoar,
Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight
No more--Oh, never more!"
"Surely that does not express your feelings--and you still a young and
beautiful woman?"
"No, but I am profoundly moved by the sad beauty of it; and by the fact
that perhaps Poe got his refrain of 'nevermore' for his _Raven_ as a
reminiscence from it."
She laughed engagingly with feminine inconsequence and stooped down to
recover a slight, silver bracelet that had slipped off over one of her
small hands. I caught a brief glimpse of the white division of her
breasts as she stooped over. The vision stabbed my heart with keen
enjoyment that pained....
Already we were caught up in a current of mysterious fellow-feeling that
was soon to bear us onward to the full ocean of frank love and passion.
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