FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148  
149   >>  
t intervals were all the same to her. She was heedless of those who came in or who went out, as well as of those who knelt around the confessionals, except now and then to wonder, as she chanced to meet some tearful eye, if the world held another heart so lonely, desolate, hopeless as her own. Hopeless? She recalled the day when she had beheld the space of blue in the sky--the hole in the day, Pug-on-a-kesheik, thus termed by her Chippewa friends--which she had taken as a token that her love for Hubert was no sin. She recalled the momentary joy that had animated her as she, in imagination, clasped that love to her heart, as a gain for her loss, as a balm for her bitter sorrow. She remembered how she had even dropped upon her knees in thankfulness to heaven for having given her such a comfort in the midst of her grief. Should _she_ have scruples when ministers of God had lifted up holy hands and sanctified such unions? Thus had her first sense of horror been blunted, and blushless become her keen, womanly shame. Why then, with a sense of the presence of the glorified spirits of her uncle and child, assumed that caressed infatuation, that which she had deemed a higher, nobler love, proportions of gigantic horror? Why had she spat out as gall and wormwood the sweet morsel she had rolled under her tongue? Why, giving up her only joy, trampling down with all her strength and might the one hope of her existence, had she returned to this strange house, wherein she could but beat her breast and cry out "unworthy, unworthy"? Was she the first woman who had mistaken dross for gold; and, finding her error, might not she, like others, fling it aside for the shining ore that lay in her path? Should her hand still grasp the piercing thorn, when the rose bloomed temptingly before her? Thus listened Althea to human sophistry, until God spoke to her through the lips of the Jesuit priest. And he said, slowly and solemnly, grasping in his right hand the emblem of our religion: "And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, let not the wife depart from her husband. But if she separate, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband; and let not the husband put away his wife." Had these words come down from the heavens in tones of thunder they could not have produced upon Althea a more stunning effect. Was she here to recognize the hand of God? Had _He_ inspired this priest to speak upon a subject that was th
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148  
149   >>  



Top keywords:
husband
 

recalled

 

horror

 

Althea

 

unworthy

 
Should
 
priest
 

piercing

 
shining
 

strange


returned

 

existence

 
trampling
 

strength

 
breast
 

finding

 
mistaken
 
grasping
 

heavens

 

remain


separate

 

unmarried

 

reconciled

 

thunder

 

inspired

 

subject

 

recognize

 

produced

 

stunning

 

effect


depart

 
Jesuit
 

sophistry

 

temptingly

 

listened

 
slowly
 

married

 
command
 

religion

 
solemnly

emblem
 

bloomed

 
glorified
 
kesheik
 

Hopeless

 

beheld

 
termed
 

momentary

 
animated
 

imagination