ow!
You own that, when here we stood last and exchanged our troth, you in
the blossom, and I in the prime, of life--you own that it was no woman's
love, deaf to all calumny, proof to all craft that could wrong the
absent; no woman's love, warm as the heart, undying as the soul, that
you pledged me then?"

"Darrell, it was not--though then I thought it was."

"Ay, ay," he continued with a smile, as if of triumph in his own pangs,
"so that truth is confessed at last! And when, once more free, you wrote
to me the letter I returned, rent in fragments, to your hand--or when,
forgiving my rude outrage and fierce reproach, you spoke to me so gently
yonder, a few weeks since, in these lonely shades, then what were your
sentiments, your motives? Were they not those of a long-suppressed and
kind remorse? of a charity akin to that which binds rich to poor, bows
happiness to suffering?--some memories of gratitude--nay, perhaps of
childlike affection?--all amiable, all generous, all steeped in that
sweetness of nature to which I unconsciously rendered justice in the
anguish I endured in losing you; but do not tell me that even then you
were under the influence of woman's love."

"Darrell, I was not."

"You own it, and you suffer me to see you again! Trifler and cruel one,
is it but to enjoy the sense of your undiminished, unalterable power?"

"Alas, Darrell! alas! why am I here?--why so yearning, yet so afraid to
come? Why did my heart fail when these trees rose in sight against the
sky?--why, why--why was it drawn hither by the spell I could not resist?
Alas, Darrell, alas! I am a woman now--and--and this--"

She lowered her veil, and turned away; her lips could not utter the
word, because the word was not pity, not remorse, not remembrance,
not even affection; and the woman loved now too well to subject to the
hazard of rejection--LOVE!

"Stay, oh stay!" cried Darrell. "Oh that I could dare to ask you to
complete the sentence! I know--I know by the mysterious sympathy of my
own soul, that you could never deceive me more! Is it--is it--"

His lips falter too; but her hand is clasped in his; her head is
reclining upon his breast; the veil is withdrawn from the sweet downcast
face; and softly on her ear steal the murmured words, "Again and now,
till the grave--Oh, by this hallowing kiss, again--the Caroline of old!"

Fuller and fuller, spreading, wave after wave, throughout the air, till
it seemed interfused and commingled