If by some unhappy chance I never saw her again and lived
to be a hundred, I should never tire of my memories. She had as many
facets as Mr. Pitt's diamond, as many tones as the great organ in
Lichfield Cathedral. To know her had enriched my life and opened my mind.
What Propertius had said of his Cynthia, I repeated to myself of my
Margaret, _Ingenium nobis ipsa puella est_. 'My' Margaret! Well, it
did her no harm for me to think it, and, after all, the sly, silly
babblings of my under-self could be shouted down by the stern voice of
common sense.
Here, under the stress of a new force, my thoughts flew off at a tangent,
and I said to myself, "Bravo, Romeo! You shall find me a rare Juliet."
I had, indeed, much ado to keep from laughing aloud, as my situation was
delicious, not to say delicate. For, on a sudden, noiselessly as the beat
of a bat's wing, two feet of ladder had shot up above the eaves, and even
now an ardent lover was hasting aloft, dreaming of lispings and kissings
to come. I mustn't frighten him too soon or too much or he'd drop off, but
as soon as he was fairly on the slope he should sip the sweetness of lips
of steel.
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