In such instants he knows,
perhaps, that there is little reward in being a dog, unless you cheat
yourself by believing more than the facts warrant. But presently he is
up to dash at a bird, with a fine forgetfulness, quite as startled by
the trick of flight as in his first days. And I, envying him his gift of
credulity, weakly strive for it.
As I have said, I had noted that in these free dreamings of mine the
painted face above my neighbor's mantel seemed to have had a place long
before I looked upon its actual lines. This perplexed me not a little;
that the face should seem to have been familiar before I had seen
it--the portrait, that it should have blended with and then almost
replaced another's, so that now the woman face I saw was eloquent of
two, though fittingly harmonized in itself. Must I lay to the philter's
magic this audacious notion; that the face of Little Miss had tangibly
come to me in some night of the mind? Sober, I was loath to commit this
absurdity; but breasting drunkenly that tide of dreams, it ceased to be
absurd.
And so I had plunged into the current again one early evening when the
growing things seemed to have stopped reluctantly for rest, when the
robins had fluted of their household duties the last time for the day,
and when only the songs of children at a game were brought to me from a
neighboring yard.
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