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Show She came from sadness, and feared that sadness would come to her again; he came from mirth and great laughter, and could not brood over future misfortune. She was the dark, still, thinking one, who would kneel beside green-shaded pools, a single finger disturbing the water-weeds; he would wait for her on the road, in sunshine, one boot perched on the stump of a tree. He was all laughter and light, fearful of nothing, while she hung back, in shadow, thinking. They had met when they were just over twenty, and were so overwhelmed by the sincerity of their love that they fled at once to the country. They found an inn, and took an airy room with a canopied bed, a porcelain water pitcher, lace curtains edging windows that looked out onto velvet fields. There was a mirror there: a great tilting oval on a wooden stand, carved with clusters of berries and intricately conspiring vines. The mirror was large enough so that they could stand together before it and see all of themselves. "Look! Let's see how we look together," they cried. They pulled off their clcthes and stood befora the mirror. They saw two figures: his large and robust, remarkably handsome, a ruddy, jolly, carefree kind of body; hers thin and dark, a secret, earnest place of strange and pensive beauty. They laughed. "Day and night," they cried. "Ah, yes." "Large people love small people," she teased, "and that is why you love me. |