The mood is not on me now.
IX.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.
August 23, 1872.
I have just returned from the strangest interview with Marjorie.
She has all but confessed to me her interest in you. But with what
modesty and dignity! Her words elude my pen as I attempt to put
them on paper; and, indeed, it was not so much what she said as her
manner; and that I cannot reproduce. Perhaps it was of a piece with
the strangeness of this whole business, that she should tacitly
acknowledge to a third party the love she feels for a man she has
never beheld! But I have lost, through your aid, the faculty of
being surprised. I accept things as people do in dreams. Now that I
am again in my room, it all appears like an illusion--the black
masses of Rembrandtish shadow under the trees, the fireflies
whirling in Pyrrhic dances among the shrubbery, the sea over there,
Marjorie sitting on the hammock!
It is past midnight, and I am too sleepy to write more.
Thursday Morning.
My father has suddenly taken it into his head to spend a few days
at the Shoals. In the meanwhile you will not hear from me. I see
Marjorie walking in the garden with the colonel. I wish I could
speak to her alone, but shall probably not have an opportunity
before we leave.
X.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.
August 28, 1872.
You were passing into your second childhood, were you? Your
intellect was so reduced that my epistolary gifts seemed quite
considerable to you, did they? I rise superior to the sarcasm in
your favor of the 11th instant, when I notice that five days'
silence on my part is sufficient to throw you into the depths of
despondency.
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