Before the day was over he had sacrificed griefs enough upon
the altar of Love. All at once the whole vacant region rushed in upon
him with a ghostly sense of emptiness and desolation. He wandered about
the dreary house like a phantom about a cenotaph. The flowers having
nothing to say, because they had ceased to mean anything, looked
ashamed of themselves. The sunshine was hastening to have done with it,
and let the winter come as soon as he liked, for there was no more use
in shining like this. And Alec being in love, could feel all this,
although he had not much imagination. For the poetic element has its
share in the most common pug-faced man in creation; and when he is in
love, what of that sort there is in him, as well as what there is of
any sort of good thing, will come to the surface, as the trout do in
the balmy summer evenings. Therefore let every gentle maiden be warned
how she takes such a manifestation of what is in the man for the man
himself. It is the deepest, it is the best in him, but it may not be in
the least his own yet. It is one thing to have a mine of gold in one's
ground, know it, and work it; and another to have the mine still but
regard the story as a fable, throw the aureal hints that find their way
to the surface as playthings to the woman who herself is but a
plaything in the owner's eyes, and mock her when she takes them for
precious.
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