So weeks
multiplied and became months, winter passed, the snows fell from the
mountains, the floods rose and subsided, summer was at hand with her
white boughs and green grasses. May was blooming into June. Still
Gretchen remained in obscurity. Sometimes in my despair I regretted
having loved her, and half resolved to return to Phyllis, where (and I
flushed at the thought!) I could find comfort and consolation. And
yet--and yet!
"I shall be a physical wreck," said Pembroke, when we finally returned
to B----, "if you keep this up much longer."
"Look at me!" was my gloomy rejoinder.
"Well, you have that interesting pallor," he admitted, "which women
ascribe to lovers."
Thrusting my elbows on the table, I buried my chin in my hands and
stared. After a while I said: "I do not believe she wants to be found."
"That has been my idea this long while," he replied, "only I did not
wish to make you more despondent than you were."
So I became resigned--as an animal becomes resigned to its cage. I
resolved to tear her image from my heart, to go with Pembroke to the
jungles and shoot tigers; to return in some dim future bronzed,
gray-haired and noted.
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