“Please”, she thinks, appealing to him with her eyes. “Think of me, for I shall think of you. You are all I have dreamed of.” Her dreams have been simple, that at least is in her favor. She dreams of a man who has a love, no, a passion for books. A respect for the written word. A man who can understand her daydreams and all that they encompass. A man that can understand that sometimes her soul is drunk with feelings that some may never know. They both know that their relationship will go no further than the brief moment they have just shared. Conversation will be the extent of this mutual intrigue. But that, of course, is never the end. Memories combined with imagination always feed longing in those who are not happy with what they have.
He will return home to a wife who could never duplicate the look he just saw in those young eyes. Why? Because her parents bred her only to be a spouse and they succeeded. They never prepared her for a moment in which someone could treat her as an equal. So now she sits, left out. Left out of the quiet moment that her husband now indulges in. The moment in which he remembers a young woman, whose breathtaking air of originality, of brilliance and wit so surprised him that now he sits alone….wishing that what he calls home could somehow include her. But it cannot. For his home was created by the woman that his mother chose as his mate. His partner in life that he hardly knows. It is not her fault. In fact, he feels a sort of sadness for her. Not a complete sadness, you mind, for every conversation he has had with her has confirmed his own belief that she was easily convinced that to marry well was her fate. Where was her own voice? Did she not have her own instinct that told her what kind of marriage she deserved? He guessed not, because he gathered nothing at all from her. If she only knew how he longed to hear an argument from her, for that would at least show him that a strong spirit lay within her, that she was not just a pretty face.
But no. He can not think of her, for now he spends his time thinking of the young lady with whom he has spent but a moment. A brief, but lasting moment. A young girl who refuses to be married off easily. She has shown him that true strength can flourish in femine thought, that she had no need for games or wiles. That she could truly be herself without trying to capture a man, she had no need of him. And by having no need of him, she has truly captured him as no other woman ever could. Even as she said goodbye, even as she acted as if she could never need him, she still said “please”…..please do not forget me, for we have had a moment that I shall not forget.
Somehow, that is enough.
