The wedding
was to be in the summer. It was then the last week in April. At the
thought I turned my face to the wall, and hoped that I might die.
But one does not die of love at twenty-four. The days that passed
slowly saw me leave my sick-bed and limp down to the river on sunny
days, to sit and watch the stream listlessly for hours, hoping
nothing, grasping nothing, except that it was all over. In all my
misadventures that was the one thing I had never dreamed of. If I
did, I as quickly banished the thought as preposterous. That she
should be another's bride seemed so utterly impossible that, sick
and feeble as I was, I laughed it to scorn even then; whereat
I fell to reading the fatal letter again, and trying to grasp its
meaning. It made it all only the more perplexing that I should not
know who he was or what he was. I had never heard of him before,
in that town where I thought I knew every living soul. That he
must be a noble fellow I knew, or he could not have won her; but
who--why--what--what had come over everything in such a short time,
and what was this ugly dream that was setting my brain awhirl and
shutting out the sunlight and the day? Presently I was in a relapse,
and it was all darkness to me, and oblivion.
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