teasingly in my ear. In a moment I watched
her fade down the dusky stairway.

When I turned back to my room the place
seemed much pleasanter than before. Lena
had left something warm and friendly in the
lamplight. How I loved to hear her laugh again!
It was so soft and unexcited and appreciative
-- gave a favorable interpretation to every-
thing. When I closed my eyes I could hear
them all laughing -- the Danish laundry girls
and the three Bohemian Marys. Lena had
brought them all back to me. It came over
me, as it had never done before, the relation
between girls like those and the poetry of
Virgil. If there were no girls like them in the
world, there would be no poetry. I under-
stood that clearly, for the first time. This
revelation seemed to me inestimably precious.
I clung to it as if it might suddenly vanish.

As I sat down to my book at last, my old
dream about Lena coming across the harvest
field in her short skirt seemed to me like the
memory of an actual experience. It floated
before me on the page like a picture, and
underneath it stood the mournful line:
/tab\_Optima_dies..._prima_fugit._

[[306]]

p305 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p306w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p307

v?