You will stay away, you say—poor fool, you are feeding on what your disease loves best! You wonder if she is not sighing for your return—and if your name is not running in her thought—and if tears of regret are not moistening those sweet eyes.
—And wondering thus, you stroll moodily and hopefully toward her father’s home; you pass the door once—twice; you loiter under the shade of an old tree, where you have sometimes bid her adieu; your old fondness is struggling with your pride, and has almost made the mastery; but in the very moment of victory, you see yonder your hated rival, and beside him, looking very gleeful and happy—your perfidious Louise.
How quickly you throw off the marks of your struggle, and put on the boldest air of boyhood; and what a dextrous handling to your knife, and what a wonderful keenness to the edge, as you cut away from the bark of the beech tree all trace of her name! Still there is a little silent relenting, and a few tears at night, and a little tremor of the hand, as you tear out—the next day—every fly-leaf that bears her name. But at sight of your rival—looking so jaunty, and in such capital spirits—you put on the proud man again. You may meet her, but you say nothing of your struggles—oh, no, not one word of that!—but you talk with amazing rapidity about your games, or what not; and you never—never give her another peep into your boyish heart!
For a week you do not see her—nor for a month—nor two months—nor three.
—Puff—puff once more; there is only a little nauseous smoke; and now—my cigar is gone out altogether. I must light again.
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THERE are those who throw away a cigar, when once gone out; they must needs have plenty more. But nobody that I ever heard of keeps a cedar box of hearts, labeled at Havana. Alas, there is but one to light!
But can a heart once lit be lighted again? Authority on this point is worth something; yet it should be impartial authority. I should be loth to take in evidence, for the fact—however it might tally with my hope—the affidavit of some rakish old widower, who had cast his weeds before the grass had started on the mound of his affliction; and I should be as slow to take, in way of rebutting testimony, the oath of any sweet young girl, just becoming conscious of her heart’s existence—by its loss.