CHAPTER XXV
I was passing along the highway, a pipe between my teeth. It was the
beginning of twilight, that trysting hour of all our reveries, when the
old days come back with a perfume as sweet and vague as that which
hovers over a jar of spiced rose leaves. I was thinking of the year
which was gone; how I first came to the inn; of the hour when I first
held her in my arms and kissed her, and vowed my love to her; of the
parting, when she of her own will had thrown her arms about my neck and
confessed. The shadows were thickening on the ground, and the voices
of the forests were hushed. I glanced at the western sky. It was like
a frame of tarnished gold, waiting for night with her diadem of stars
to step within. The purple hills were wrapping themselves in robes of
pearly mists; the flowing river was tinted with dun and vermilion; and
one by one the brilliant planets burst through the darkening blues of
the heavens. The inn loomed up against the sky, gray and lonely.
Behind me, far away down the river, I could catch occasional glimpses
of the lamps of the village.
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