by Willa Cather
When I turned back to my room the place seemed much pleasanter thanbefore. Lena had left something warm and friendly in the lamplight. How Iloved to hear her laugh again! It was so soft and unexcited andappreciative--gave a favorable interpretation to everything. When I closedmy eyes I could hear them all laughing--the Danish laundry girls and thethree Bohemian Marys. Lena had brought them all back to me. It came overme, as it had never done before, the relation between girls like those andthe poetry of Virgil. If there were no girls like them in the world, therewould be no poetry. I understood that clearly, for the first time. Thisrevelation seemed to me inestimably precious. I clung to it as if it mightsuddenly vanish.
As I sat down to my book at last, my old dream about Lena coming acrossthe harvest field in her short skirt seemed to me like the memory of anactual experience. It floated before me on the page like a picture, andunderneath it stood the mournful line: Optima dies {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} prima fugit.