Alan Sullivan

“ And then his mind wandered further back, and he visioned their honeymoon and the still enfranchised Maria with laughing eyes and ruffled hair as she drew his head down on her round young shoulder and said, "Don't hurry back to the old parish; it will have you long enough!" He breathed a little faster at the thought of Maria with her hair emancipated from its convolvulated hump; Maria, with her beautiful young arms around his neck; Maria in a tea-gown; Maria kissing him as she used to kiss him, and saying, "James, it's time we had a good holiday again!" ”

“ Mrs. Berryman sighed. "It's not serious, so far as the doctors can tell, but—one never really knows." Her large eyes engulfed him. "I've been so much alone of late that I wanted to talk to you."
"Yes. Can I be of any service?"
She nodded. "You see, one can never tell how long one is going to live."
The Reverend James looked startled. This springlike room yielded no suggestion of departure, and Mrs. Berryman, though undoubtedly pale, lacked every premonitory symptom of dissolution. ”

“ Berryman should have aroused within him these pleasurable emotions which had failed, for many years, to answer to the touch of spring plus Maria. One spring, he conceded, was admittedly very like another. He shrank loyally from the conclusion that the variant element must be found elsewhere, and began all over again. Maria was, without question, devoted to him. No man could ask more from a woman than Maria had laid at his sacerdotal feet. Furthermore, Maria was his parochial calendar. She had individual brain-cells, it appeared, for each successive parish function. ”