When
you are young again in body, these gray hairs shall render you
distinguished."
Then she sat down beside me, and clasped my hand, now looking
out into the clear light of afternoon to the farther shores of
Levis, showing green here and there from a sudden March rain, the
boundless forests beyond, and near us the ample St. Lawrence still
covered with its vast bridge of ice; anon into my face, while I
gazed into those deeps of her blue eyes that I had drowned my heart
in. I loved to watch her, for with me she was ever her own absolute
self, free from all artifice, lost in her perfect naturalness: a
healthy, perfect soundness, a primitive simplicity beneath the
artifice of usual life. She had a beautiful hand, long, warm, and
firm, and the fingers, when they clasped, seemed to possess and
inclose your own--the tenderness of the maidenly, the protectiveness
of the maternal. She carried with her a wholesome fragrance and
beauty as of an orchard, and while she sat there I thought of the
engaging words:
"Thou art to me like a basket of summer fruit, and I seek
thee in thy cottage by the vineyard, fenced about with good
commendable trees.
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