Guy Wetmore Carryl

“ Majestically, with ponderous bass notes and a deeper comment of short, staccato chords, the Rhapsodic began. It was as solemn as a dirge in its adagio movement, till the high treble began to flutter into the motif, and dragged it upward, with a brilliant run, into a suggestion of running water. Plunging again into the bass, the music marched firmly on, varied with higher chords, until, through the monotonous throb, a bird chirped, twittered, and trilled, and cadenza followed cadenza, plashing in and over the main theme. ”

“ I’m so careless, Andrew. I don’t think — I forget. You see, we are different, nous autres. What are little things to other women are great things to us, and what are great things to them—”
Then she looked into his eyes. Almost unconsciously, her fingers touched his arm.
“I wish I could make you understand,” she added. “Even with me, there is only one thing that can justify—”
She paused for a breath, with a gesture toward the open window. ”

“ As he watched Mirabelle come and go, as he heard her comments, as he felt the magnetism of her presence, he was smitten with a vast sense of loneliness — with a perception that, in reality, no man is sufficient unto himself. ”

“ To the man in whose life woman has never played a thoroughly intimate part there is something indescribably alluring in her near association with the little details of commonplace existence. Andrew was conscious that, in this independence which he had so lately learned to value, there had been lacking a something which was now, for the first time, supplied. ”

“ Rather, it was a blotting out of every consideration save that he was with her. America, Poissy, even Paris, humming there below them, seemed to belong to another world, and that in which he was living for the moment, to be made up of sunlight, and silence, and perfume. ”

“ It has all been so different from anything like that. You’ve been like the girls I know in my own country, like a comrade, like a chum. I’ve tried to keep myself from thinking of you in any other light. I’ve always been glad to be with you: yes, and I’m glad to have you with me now. And yet — I know that we shall both be sorry for this. To-morrow—”
“To-morrow!”
Misunderstanding, she turned to him, and slipped her hand into his. A moment she hesitated, and then bowed her face against his arm. ”