United States or French Polynesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
His friend met him as men meet in houses of mourning. "Is this your wedding face?" cried Hagadorn. "Why, man, starved as I am, I look more like a bridegroom than you!" "There's no wedding to-day!" "No wedding! Why, you're not " "Marie Beaujeu died last night " "Marie " "Died last night.
Then at midnight the lovers who were to wed whispered their vows in the gloom of the cold church, and walked together through the snow to lay their bridal wreaths upon a grave. Three nights later, Hagadorn skated back again to his home. They wanted him to go by sunlight, but he had his way, and went when Venus made her bright path on the ice.
The sun climbed arrogantly up to his place above all other things, and as Hagadorn took off his skates and glanced carelessly lakeward, he beheld a great wind-rift in the ice, and the waves showing blue and hungry between white fields.
But Hagadorn broke in with his story and told him all as it had come to pass. That day they watched beside the maiden, who lay with tapers at her head and at her feet, and in the little church the bride who might have been at her wedding said prayers for her friend. They buried Marie Beaujeu in her bridesmaid white, and Hagadorn was before the altar with her, as he had intended from the first!
Well, Hagadorn followed the white skater all the night, and when the ice flushed pink at dawn, and arrows of lovely light shot up into the cold heavens, she was gone, and Hagadorn was at his destination.
These things made it difficult perhaps impossible for Ralph Hagadorn to say more than, "I love you." But that much he meant to say though he were scourged with chagrin for his temerity. This determination grew upon him as he swept along the ice under the starlight. Venus made a glowing path toward the west and seemed eager to reassure him.
The night Ralph Hagadorn started out for Echo Bay bent on a pleasant duty he laughed to himself, and said that he did not at all object to being the only man in the world, so long as the world remained as unspeakably beautiful as it was when he buckled on his skates and shot away into the solitude.
Word Of The Day