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Page 16
Dull days, dull weeks,
dull months dragged on, to him
Seeming all void because made void of her.
The summer came and wooed him to the hush
Of woodlands, or to the wide breezy shores
Where the waves make swaying music for the dreams
Of waking sleepers gazing out to sea,
Or to the keen strong joy of eager steps
Toiling upon the scarps of snowy peaks.
But Gervase watched the stir and moil of streets,
And the great daily eddies to and fro
Of busy brattling human lives, and thought
"Lota is somewhere in the crowd." Then once
He, wearying slowly through his dusty walk
On the baked flagstones, saw a face glimpse out
From a dingy cab, and thought "Could it be she?"
And in a moment smiled to think what cheats
Fancy can put on over anxious eyes.
And yet, that nothing might be left undone,
Took hastily a fellow dingy cab,
And followed closely.
So he shortly came
Into a railway Babel, echoing
With thuds of packages, and clattering trucks,
And runnings to and fro, and shouts, and bells,
And shriek s of sputtering engines. In the press
The face flashed out again, - not long enough -
And still flashed out like Lota's, and he caught
The colour of a ribbon and the flow
Of a loose mantle, and so pushed his way
In the wake, with them for pilots of his chase.
And yet he could not see which seat she took
In the train that throbbed already with the start
When he sprang into it. A minute - less -
And she and he were on their whizzing way
To where he knew not, though his ticket said
A far enough long road.
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