Try to forget me and
go your way. I am only the epitome of unhappiness and
ill-success."
But she laughed and would have none of it.
Will you ever forget that day, Athanasia? How the little gamins,
Creole throughout, came half shyly near the log, fishing, and
exchanging furtive whispers and half-concealed glances at the
silent couple. Their angling was rewarded only by a little black
water-moccasin that wriggled and forked its venomous red tongue
in an attempt to exercise its death-dealing prerogative. This
Athanasia insisted must go back into its native black waters, and
paid the price the boys asked that it might enjoy its freedom.
The gamins laughed and chattered in their soft patois; the Don
smiled tenderly upon Athanasia, and she durst not look at the
reeds as she talked, lest their crescendo sadness yield a
foreboding. Just then a wee girl appeared, clad in a multi-hued
garment, evidently a sister to the small fishermen. Her keen
black eyes set in a dusky face glanced sharply and suspiciously
at the group as she clambered over the wet embankment, and it
seemed the drizzling mist grew colder, the sobbing wind more
pronounced in its prophetic wail. Athanasia rose suddenly. "Let
us go," she said; "the eternal feminine has spoiled it all."
The bayou flows as calmly, as darkly, as full of hidden passions
as ever. On a night years after, the moon was shining upon it
with a silvery tenderness that seemed brighter, more caressingly
lingering than anywhere within the old city.
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