The Incomplete Amorist

To-morrow he would be there early. A ship of promise should be--not launched--that was weeks away. The first timbers should be felled to build a ship to carry him, and her too, of course, a little way towards the enchanted islands.

He knew the sea well, and it would be pleasant to steer on it one to whom it was all new--all, all.

"Dear little girl," he said, "I don't suppose she has ever even thought of love."

He was not in love with her, but he meant to be. He carefully thought of her all that day, of her hair, her eyes, her hands; her hands were really beautiful--small, dimpled and well-shaped--not the hands he loved best, those were long and very slender,--but still beautiful. And before he went to bed he wrote a little poem, to encourage himself: Yes. I have loved before; I know This longing that invades my days, This shape that haunts life's busy ways I know since long and long ago.

This starry mystery of delight That floats across my eager eyes, This pain that makes earth Paradise, These magic songs of day and night, I know them for the things they are: A passing pain, a longing fleet, A shape that soon I shall not meet, A fading dream of veil and star.

Yet, even as my lips proclaim The wisdom that the years have lent, Your absence is joy's banishment And life's one music is your name.

I love you to the heart's hid core: Those other loves? How can one learn From marshlights how the great fires burn? Ah, no--I never loved before!

When he read it through he entitled it, "The Veil of Maya," so that it might pretend to have no personal application.

After that more than ever rankled the memory of that first morning.

"How could I?" he asked himself. "I must indeed have been in a gross mood. One seems sometimes to act outside oneself altogether. Temporary possession by some brutal ancestor perhaps. Well, it's not too late."

Next morning he worked at his picture, in the rabbit-warren, but his head found itself turning towards the way by which on that first day she had gone. She must know that on a day like this he would not be wasting the light,--that he would be working. She would be wanting to see him again. Would she come out? He wished she would. But he hoped she wouldn't. It would have meant another readjustment of ideas. He need not have been anxious. She did not come.