But you I release. Before dawn I shall be on my
return. The provision for your future, thank heaven, no demands of
justice can infringe. Hereafter know me not as your husband, but as one
who wronged you, devoted his all to reparation, and failed.'
I rose--weak and tottering--and passed to the door. I caught but a
glimpse of her face. There was in it, and particularly in her
eyes,--which, perhaps, on account of her dramatic cultivation, had the
faculty of concentrating in a wonderful manner the most powerful as well
as the most indefinable expressions,--a peculiar light, which then I did
not understand, but afterwards, oh, too well. Fool, fool, that I was,
after all my anxious scrutiny of her moods through two years of
intensest agony, not to understand this one. The alchemist, who wasted
his life in vigils over his crucible, but stood uncognizant of the gold
when it gleamed lustrously before him, was not more a dolt. Thrice
afterward I beheld that light in her glorious eyes. To my spiritual
sight I can ever recall it. When you asked me her history, those orbs of
beauty beamed out upon me with that same fascinating light.
* * * * *
I went immediately to America.
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