Perhaps the Greek boy who once intruded upon a goddess in her temple had
an experience more like mine; though in my case the goddess had taken
part in the ceremony and consented to it. There would be something
between us forever, I felt, different from anything that had ever taken
place between a boy and girl in all the world (it always begins in that
way), something of which I could never speak to her or to any one,
something which would make her different to me, in a strange, intimate,
unspeakable way, whether I ever saw her again or not. Oh, the lost
enchantment of youth, which makes an idol of a discarded pair of
corsets, and locates a dream land about the combings of a woman's hair;
and lives a century of bliss in a day of embarrassed silence!
It must have been three o'clock, for the rooster of the half-dozen fowls
which I had traded for had just crowed, when Virginia called to me from
the wagon.
"That man," said she in a scared voice, "is hunting for me."
"Yes," said I, only guessing whom she meant.
"If he takes me I shall kill myself!"
"He will never take you from me," I said.
"What can you do?"
"I have had a thousand fights," I said; "and I have never been whipped!"
I afterward thought of one or two cases in which bigger boys had bested
me, though I had never cried "Enough!" and it seemed to me that it was
not quite honest to leave her thinking such a thing of me when it was
not quite so. And it looked a little like bragging; but it appeared to
quiet her, and I let it go.
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