She had been disappointed. She trembled with a strange dread whenever she
recalled the moment when Bodine drew her to himself, conscious now of a
truth, before unknown, that there was something in her nature not amenable
to enthusiasm, spiritual exaltation, or her passion for
self-sacrifice--something that would not shrink from death for his sake
yet which did shrink from his kisses upon her lips.
Never had she suffered as during the last few days, for she was being
taught by the inexorable logic of facts and events. In Ella's crystal
nature she saw what her own love should be, and might have been. She had
witnessed the girl's wild impulse to follow her lover to the depths of the
harbor, and her own heart gave swift interpretation. She was alive because
a Northern boy, deemed incapable of anything better than selfish, reckless
love-making, had unhesitatingly risked his life to save one who had
spurned him. Even Mrs. Hunter's prejudice had been compelled to yield, and
she to admit the young fellow's nobility, of which she was a living proof.
The wretched thought haunted Mara that Owen Clancy, unblinded, had
discovered for himself, what had been forced upon her, that there were
Northern people with whom he could gladly affiliate. The shadow of death
had not been so dark and baleful as the shadow of the past in which she so
long had dwelt, for in the former there had been light enough to reveal
the folly and injustice of indiscriminating prejudice and enmity.
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