Before the eyes of my mind there flashed again
the brilliance of their arms, in my ears rang the thunder of their
chargers' hooves, whilst the image of the girl in her shimmering, bronze-
hued robe remained insistently.
Theirs the life that should have been mine! She such a companion as should
have shared my life and borne me children of my own. And I would burn with
shame again in memory, as I had burnt in actual fact, to think that she
should have beheld me in so unkempt and bedraggled a condition.
How must I compare in her eyes with the gay courtiers who would daily hover
in her presence and hang upon her gentle speech? What thought of me could
I hope should ever abide with her, as the image of her abode with me? Or,
if she thought of me at all, she must think of me just as a poor hermit, a
man who had donned the anchorite's sackcloth and turned his back upon a
world that for him was empty.
It is very easy for you worldly ones who read, to conjecture what had
befallen me. I was enamoured. In a meeting of eyes had the thing come to
me. And you will say that it is little marvel, considering the seclusion
of all my life and particularly that of the past few months, that the first
sweet maid I beheld should have wrought such havoc, and conquered my heart
by the mere flicker of her lashes.
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