If I
had never known the horror of doubt, how could I have known what
certainty is? And I did doubt you; I dare acknowledge it now. I wonder
if you can understand what the shame of that doubt was? When I thought
your absence and your silence were intentional slights, I knew how they
felt when 'they called on the rocks to cover them, and I wished--oh,
_how_ I wished!--that a thousand years had passed, and my spirit
could be at the place where we met, and see the pillars broken, and.
the ivy climbing over the ruins, and the lizards at home amongst them,
and the shameless sunlight making bare the spot where we stood.
"It was as if I had been punished for some awful unknown sin, and when
I seemed to be dying, and I dared not write to you, and all hope of
ever knowing the truth had departed, I used to exclaim in my misery:
'Verily, Lord, if Thy servant sinned she hath suffered! for the anguish
of death has been doubled, and the punishment of the lost has begun
while yet the tortured mind can make its lament and moan with the
tortured body!'
"But all that bitter past only enhances the present.
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