Cigarette had been there a whole hour in thought; she who never had
wasted a moment in meditation or reverie, and who found the long African
day all too short for her busy, abundant, joyous life, that was always
full of haste and work, just as a bird's will seem so, though the bird
have no more to do than to fly at its will through summer air, and feed
at its will from brook and from berry, from a ripe ear of the corn or
from a deep cup of the lily. For the first time she was letting time
drift away in the fruitless labor of vain, purposeless thought, because,
for the first time also, happiness was not with her.
They were gone forever--all the elastic joyance, all the free, fair
hours, all the dauntless gayety of childhood, all the sweet, harmonious
laughter of a heart without a care. They were gone forever; for the
touch of love and of pain had been laid on her; and never again would
her radiant eyes smile cloudlessly, like the young eagle's, at a sun
that rose but to be greeted as only youth can great another dawn of life
that is without a shadow.
And she leaned wearily there, with her cheek lying on the cold, gray
Moorish stone; the color and the brightness were in the rays of the
light, in the rich hues of her hair and her mouth, in the scarlet glow
of her dress; there was no brightness in her face. The eyes were vacant
as they watched the green lizard glide over the wall beyond, and the
lips were parted with a look of unspeakable fatigue; the tire, not
of the limbs, but of the heart.
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