Yet for once I was blind to it all; moreover, my pipe
refused to "draw" - pieces of grass, twigs, and my penknife were
alike unavailing.
So I sat there, brooding upon the fickleness of womankind, as many
another has done before me, and many will doubtless do after, alack!
And the sum of my thoughts was this: Lisbeth had deceived me; the
hour of trial had found her weak; my idol was only common clay,
after all. And yet she had but preferred wealth to comparative
poverty, which surely, according to all the rules of common sense,
had shown her possessed of a wisdom beyond her years. And who was
I to sit and grieve over it? Under the same circumstances
ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have chosen precisely the
same course; but then to me Lisbeth had always seemed the one
exempt - the hundredth woman; moreover, there be times when love,
unreasoning and illogical, is infinitely more beautiful than this
much-vaunted common sense.
This and much more was in my mind as I sat fumbling with my useless
pipe and staring with unseeing eyes at the flow of the river.
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