Chapter XX

When our bright garden was gay with all its
flowers, the regret at having shrunk our hearts
sprang from our lips in moments of passion; and
forgiveness, offered but deserved always, and
the exaggerated display of our wretchedness and
so many tears moistening our sad, sincere eyes
uplifted our love.

But in these months of heavy rain, when
everything huddles together and makes itself
small, when brightness itself tires of thrusting
back shadow and night, our soul is no longer
vibrant and strong enough to confess our faults
with rapture.

We tell them in slow speech; in truth, with
affection still, but at the fall of the evening
and no longer at dawn; sometimes even we count
them on our ten fingers like things that we
number and arrange in the house, and to lessen
their folly or their number we debate them.