I loved. I saw what life is.
I saw the great deceit of Nature. I saw her plan, her wish, her
merciless, pitiless desire; and seeing this, I smiled slowly in the dark
at the mockery of what we call civilization, its fuss and flurry, its
pretense, its misery. Indeed, we are small, but life is not small. We
are small, but love is very large and strong, born as it is of the great
necessity that man shall not forget the world, that woman shall not rob
the race.
For myself, I accepted my station in this plan, saying nothing beyond my
own soul. None the less, I said there to my own soul, that this must be
now, till death should come to part us twain.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE GARDEN
Soon now we would be able to travel; but whither, and for what purpose?
I began to shrink from the thought of change. This wild world was enough
for me. So long as we might eat and sleep thus, and so long as I might
not lose sight of her, it seemed to me I could not anywhere gain in
happiness and content. Elsewhere I must lose both.
None the less we must travel. We had been absent now from civilization
some three weeks, and must have been given up long since. Our party must
have passed far to the westward, and by this time our story was known at
Laramie and elsewhere.
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