Vanishing Roads and Other Essays by Richard Le Gallienne
page 168 of 301 (55%)
page 168 of 301 (55%)
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"As we often were," I added. And then through the corners of our eyes we saw the young lovers rise from the table, and the man enfold his treasure in her opera cloak, O so reverently, O so tenderly, as though he were wrapping up some holy flower. And O those deep eyes she gave him, half turning her head as he did so! "That look," whispered Aurea, quoting Tennyson, "'had been a clinging kiss but for the street.'" Then suddenly they were gone, caught up like Enoch, into heaven--some little heaven, maybe, like one that Aurea and I remember, high up under the ancient London roofs. But, with their going, alas, Aurea had vanished too, and I was left alone with my Greek waiter, who was asking me what cheese I would prefer. With the coming of coffee and cognac, I lit my cigar and settled down to deliberate reverie, as an opium smoker gives himself up to his dream. I savoured the bitter-sweetness of my memories; I took a strange pleasure in stimulating the ache of my heart with vividly recalled pictures of innumerable dead hours. I systematically passed from table to table all around that spacious peristyle. There was scarcely one at which I had not sat with some vanished companion in those years of ardent, irresponsible living which could never come again. Not always a woman had been the companion whose form I thus conjured out of the past, too often out of the grave; for the noble friendship of youth haunted those |
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