Mr. Shaw assisted Miss Deane--whom, until he saw her nearly pulled in pieces between two donkey-women, he had quite forgotten--upon one of the most docile-looking of the animals.
She mounted with such thistledown sprightliness that she nearly went over the saddle and down on the other side. He looked astonished as she fluttered above his hat, and then--forgot her.
If any one find this portly bachelor discourteous and basely recreant to certain of the best memories of his manhood, let that one stop a moment and think. This frisky lady, who always seemed carrying on a most desperate flirtation with some invisible adorer, was certainly not the Annie of his summer in the Tudor mansion. She was spiritually not a day older than Annie, but her face was very much older; and what, after all, is the same soul to us if the casket is strange? What is a young face grown old to us who knew its youth and have not seen its changing? Moreover, that perennial youth of hers, touching and sad as it may possibly seem when thought about, would have been the object of your ridicule could you have seen it face to face.
Much as we may prate of natures ever young, there is no more melancholy sight in the world than soul and body that miss step with each other in this heavy and forced march called Life. Why should we seek to keep our hearts young, we who must die? For unto youth or youthfulness what is death but darkness and night at noonday?
Then another thing to excuse Mr. Shaw's apparent neglect: he was approaching a crisis of his own life, and what are the convulsions of a universe compared to those quicker heart-beats which we call Crises in our little lives?
After assisting Miss Deane he mounted another donkey, and rode, not exactly like paladin of old, but like a portly and absent-minded modern tourist, silently by her side up the steep path, whither their luggage followed them upon the heads of women.
Between their donkeys strode a bare-legged woman in a ragged petticoat. She was bronzed and wrinkled, with straggling hair thrust through with a silver arrow, and coarse brown chemise falling widely open over an unlovely neck and breast. She uttered many a strident yell, accentuated by heavy thwacks of her club upon her donkeys' flanks. She was dirty, wild-eyed and hideous. It were as difficult to imagine her comely and young as to believe this little dried-up old girl had not been a flirting old maid from her cradle.