But Miss Corbin would doubtless look somewhat askance at the idea of spending the rest of her life with me on a mountain. She is very fond of me, but her feeling for me is not like mine for her, which indeed is natural. And her life is made up mostly of sacrifices--doing for her fellow-creatures, giving of herself. She never would leave this.
And so, then, the mountainside and the solitude and the friend with me are, like every good thing, but a vision.
"Thy friend is always thy friend; not to have, nor to hold, nor to love, nor to rejoice in: but to remember."
And so do I remember my one friend, the anemone lady--and think often about her with passionate love.
Happiness, don't you know, is of three kinds--and all are transitory. It never stays, but it comes and goes.
There is that happiness that comes from newly-washed feet, for instance, and a pair of clean stockings on them, particularly after one has been upon a tramp into the country. Always I have identified this kind of happiness with a Maltese cat, dipping a hungry, stealthy, sensual tongue into a bowl of fresh, thick cream.
There is that still happiness that has come to me at rare times when I have been with my one friend--and which does very well for people whose feelings are moderate. They need wish for nothing beyond it. They could not appreciate anything deeper.
And there is that kind of happiness which is of the red sunset sky. There is something terrible in the thought of this indescribable mad Happiness. What a thing it is for a human being to be _happy_--with the red, red Happiness of the sunset sky!
It's like a terrific storm in summer with rain and wind, beating quiet water into wild waves, bending great trees to the ground,--convulsing the green earth with delicious pain.
It's like something of Schubert's played on the violin that stirs you within to exquisite torture.
It's like the human voice divine singing a Scotch ballad in a manner to drag your soul from your body.
But there are no words to tell it. It is something infinitely above and beyond words. It is the kind of Happiness the Devil will bring to me when he comes,--to me, to _me_! Oh, why does he not come now when I am in the midst of my youth! Why is he so long in coming?