The Nest in the Honeysuckles, and other Stories
THE Nest in the Honeysuckles, AND OTHER STORIES. [Illustration] WRITTEN FOR THE AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION. Philadelphia: AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, No. 316 CHESTNUT STREET. _NEW YORK:_ No. 147 NASSAU ST. _BOSTON:_ No. 9 CORNHILL...._CINCINNATI:_ 41 WEST FOURTH ST. _LOUISVILLE_: No. 103 FOURTH ST. _Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by the
I forgot the irony of the fact that I was merely seeing her through
his eyes--the eyes of the man who had robbed me. I felt only her
presence. I fell on my knees. I flung my arms across the beautiful
form--no colder to my embrace than had been the living woman! As I
recoiled from the death-like touch, my eyes fell on the words carved
on the face of the sarcophagus, and once more, it was like the voice
that was hushed in my ears.
"I pray to God that she may lie
Forever with unopened eye
While the dim sheeted ghosts go by."
"Amen," I said, with all my heart, to the words he had carved above
her, for what, after the fever of such a life, could be so welcome to
her as dreamless, eternal silence, in which there would be no more
passion, no more struggling, no more love?
And, if I wished with all my soul, that the great surprise of death
might, for her, have been peace and silence, did I not bar myself as
well as him from the hope of Heaven?
How long I stood there, with hungry eyes devouring the marble effigy
of her I so loved--now tortured by its fidelity, now punished by its
coldness--I never knew.
Sometimes I noticed the changing of the light, the shifting of the
THE Nest in the Honeysuckles, AND OTHER STORIES. [Illustration] WRITTEN FOR THE AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION. Philadelphia: AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION, No. 316 CHESTNUT STREET. _NEW YORK:_ No. 147 NASSAU ST. _BOSTON:_ No. 9 CORNHILL...._CINCINNATI:_ 41 WEST FOURTH ST. _LOUISVILLE_: No. 103 FOURTH ST. _Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1855, by the