The Day of His Youth

								

joy. To-day I have needed thee more than ever, though it is only to-day
that I learned to recognize the need. All the morning a sweet languor
held me, warm, like the sun, and touched with his fervor, so that I
felt within me darts of impelling fire. I sat in the woods by the
spring, my eyes on the dancing shadows at my feet, not thinking, not
willing, yet expectant. I felt as if something were coming, and that I
must be ready to meet it when the great moment should strike. Suddenly
my heart beat high in snatches of rhythm; my feet stirred, my ears woke
to the whir of wings, and my eyes to flickering shade. My whole self
was whelmed and suffocated in a wave of sweet delight. And then it was
that my heart cried out for another heart to beat beside it and make
harmony for the two; then it was that thou, dear one, wast born from my
thought. I am not disloyal in seeking companionship. My father is
myself. Let me say that over and over. When I tell him my fancies, he
smiles sadly, saying they are the buds of youth, born never to flower.
To him Nature is goddess and mother; he turns to her for sustenance by
day, and lies on her bosom at night. After death he will be content to
rest in her arms and become one flesh with her mould. But I--I! O, is
it because I am young; and will the days chill out this strange, sweet
fever, as they have in him? Two years ago--yes, a year--I had no higher
joy than to throw myself, body and soul, into motion: to row, fish,
swim, to listen, in a dream of happiness, while my father read old
Homer to me in the evening, or we masterfully swept through
duets--'cello and violin--that my sleep was too dreamless to repeat to
me. And now the very world is changed; help me to understand it, my
friend; or, if I am to blame, help me to conquer myself.

II
I have much to tell thee, my friend! and of a nature never before known
in these woods and by this water. Last night, at sunset, I stood on the
Point waiting for my father to come in from his round about the island,
when suddenly a boat shot out from Silver Stream and came on toward me,
rowed to the accompaniment of a song I never heard. I stood waiting,
for the voices were beautiful, one high and strong (and as I listened,
it flashed upon me that my father had said the 'cello is like a woman
singing), another, deep and rich. There were two men, as I saw when
they neared me, and two women; and all were young. The men--what were
they like? I hardly know, except that they made me feel ashamed of my
roughness. And the women! One was yellow-haired and pale; she had a
fairy build, I think, and her shoulders were like the birch-tree. Her
head was bare, and the sun--he had stayed to do it--had turned all the
threads to gold. She was so white! white as the tiarella in the spring.
When I saw her, I bent forward; they looked my way, and I drew back
behind the tree. I had been curious, and I was ashamed; it seemed to me