It was that butterfly's beauty so in keeping with waltzing,
darting about the garden, laughter and gaiety, and incongruous
with serious thought, grief, and repose; and it seemed as though
a gust of wind blowing over the platform, or a fall of rain, would
be enough to wither the fragile body and scatter the capricious
beauty like the pollen of a flower.
"So-o! . . ." the officer muttered with a sigh when, after the
second bell, we went back to our compartment.
And what that "So-o" meant I will not undertake to decide.
Perhaps he was sad, and did not want to go away from the
beauty and the spring evening into the stuffy train; or perhaps
he, like me, was unaccountably sorry for the beauty, for himself,
and for me, and for all the passengers, who were listlessly and
reluctantly sauntering back to their compartments. As we passed
the station window, at which a pale, red-haired telegraphist with
upstanding curls and a faded, broad-cheeked face was sitting be-
side his apparatus, the officer heaved a sigh and said:
"I bet that telegraphist is in love with that pretty girl. To live
out in the wilds under one roof with that ethereal creature and
not fall in love is beyond the power of man. And what a calami-
ty, my friend! what an ironical fate, to be stooping, unkempt,
gray, a decent fellow and not a fool, and to be in love with that
pretty, stupid little girl who would never take a scrap of notice of
you! Or worse still: imagine that telegraphist is in love, and at
the same time married, and that his wife is as stooping, as un-
kempt, and as decent a person as himself.''
On the platform between our carriage and the next the guard
was standing with his elbows on the railing, looking in the direc-
tion of the beautiful girl, and his battered, wrinkled, unpleasa -
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