Part 2 (1/2)
”Do you think so?” she said, looking up gratefully ”I alad I so want to do my duty by you”
He had h such caresses were rare between the in her tones that chilled him, and he merely raised a tress of her hair to his lips instead At the door he bade her a pleasant farewell, but his countenance grew sorrowful as he went down the path
”Duty,” he murmured, ”always duty, never love Well, the fault is my own that ere ever married God help me to be true and kind to her always She shall never know that I ation that afternoon a ser how each should bear his own burden patiently,--not darkening the lives of others by co words, no matter how much of heartache lay beneath them
He told how near God is to us all, ready to heal and to strengthen; and closed by showing hoeet and beautiful even a co endurance of trouble
It was a helpful serht the listeners nearer God More than one heart was touched by those earnest words that seemed to breathe divine sy more at peace than he had done for many days His wife's room was still, as he entered it She was in her easy-chair at the , lying back a the pillows asleep Her face was flushed and feverish, her long lashes ith tears The wraps had fallen away from her, and he stooped over to replace them As he did so her lips moved in her half-delirious slu like his own A wild throb of joy thrilled through hiain she spoke the naly It was the naers that held the half-draraps shook convulsively as with acutest pain, then drew the coverings gently around her
”God help her, God help her!” hewith tears,--tears for her sorrow rather than his own
CHAPTER III
A DARKENED FIRESIDE
Her way is parted frooal may we meet?
DANTE ROSSETTI
Ruth was , but at last, after Cecil had watched at her side till a late hour, she sank into a troubled sleep
Then the old Indian servant insisted on taking his place at the sufferer's bedside, for she saw that he was much worn by the labors of the day and by anxiety for his wife At first he refused; but she was a skilled nurse, and he knew that the invalid would fare better in her hands than his own, so at last he consented on condition that she would call hireorse The woman promised, and he withdrew into the library, where a temporary bed had been made for him At the door he turned and looked back
His wife lay with closed eyes and flushed face amid the white pillows
The robe over her breast stirred with her difficult breathing, and her head turned now and then from side to side while she uttered broken, feverish words By her sat the swarthy nurse, watching her every entle touch totenderness and pity caht ”If I could onlyher dead lover back to life, how gladly would I put her in his aro away forever!” And it seeed the poor sufferer; that he was to blame for her sorrow
He went on into the library A la on the table; a Hebrew Bible and a copy of Hoed those heavy and ponderous toe ont to clothe itself
He seated hiitated to sleep But it was in vain that he tried to interest hiht its power; it was in vain that he tried to forget hile over the body of Patroclus
Hawthorne tells us that a person of artistic teh the Ro in the finest one from the picture, the inspiration froless collection of colors, the other a dull effigy carved in stone
Soht Irresponsive to the grand beauty of the poem he felt only its undertone of heartache and woe
”It is like hues; ”it is bright on the surface, but dark and terrible with pain below What a black mystery is life! what bitter irony of justice!
Hector is dragged at Achilles' chariot-wheel, and Paris goes free
Helen returns to her home in triumph, while Andromache is left desolate Did Homer write in satire, and is the Iliad but a splendid mockery of justice, human and divine? Or is life so sad that every tale woven of it looth his brain grew over-weary, and he slept sitting in his chair, his head resting on the pages of the open book