Life with him was enchanted madness.
He had begun. He stretched out his arm and slowly began to write on
the air of the room. Sometimes in earlier years she had sat in his
classroom when he was beginning a lecture; and it was thus, standing
at the blackboard, that he sometimes put down the subject of his
lecture for the students. Slowly now he shaped each letter and as he
finished each word, he read it aloud to her:
"A STORY OF THE CHRISTMAS TREE, FOR JOSEPHINE, WIFE OF FREDERICK"
IV. THE WANDERING TALE
"Josephine!"
He uttered her name with beautiful reverence, letting the sound of it
float over the Christmas Tree and die away on the garlanded walls of
the room: it was his last tribute to her, a dedication.
Then he began:
"Josephine, sometimes while looking out of the study window a spring
morning, I have watched you strolling among the flowers of the lawn. I
have seen you linger near a honeysuckle in full bloom and question the
blossoms in your questioning way--you who are always wishing to probe
the heart of things, to drain out of them the red drop of their
significance. But, gray-eyed querist of actuality, those fragrant
trumpets could blow to your ear no message about their origin.
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