‘She’s trying to reason him out of his folly,’ remarked Louis, of France, ‘good little girl!’
‘I never felt the chains gall till now, Mercia,’ the machine confessed with relentless veracity. ‘A quiet indifference kept me content until thy beauty set my heart a-beating with a new joy. I knew not love till mine eyes dwelt upon thy loveliness, and mine ears listened to the words that flowed from thy lips like a sweet rippling fountain; whose waters gave forth a pure, clear, life-giving stream.
‘Yes, I have drunk therein, and am filled with new emotions—new joys—new hopes—new life!’ The phonograph here made a pause, when it recommenced with a sobbing sound.
‘Now is my beauty an evil thing, and a curse to me!’ cried Mercia’s voice, in soft, pathetic sweetness. ‘Would I had never been born, or that Nature had shaped me uncomely, for then this misfortune could not have overtaken me! Two men desire me, and I may not have either. I must live in a world filled like a garden with flowers—flowers and blossoms of love. Yet, I may not touch them; their fragrance is not for me; not one may I wear on my breast!
‘Yet, they nod and beckon me to pluck them. They offer me the incense of their being, and would fain spend their full fragrance upon me; for their desire is to nestle on my bosom, and give me the joy of their beauty and love.’
As the instrument gave utterance to this sweet rhapsody, delivered in a low, clear, plaintive voice, that fell like music on the ear of the enraptured auditory, who listened breathlessly to every word that fell from her lips, as it were; for in imagination they saw her with bowed head, and clasped hands breathing the poetry of that moment of divine exaltation.
The human desire for human love was finding expression: the longing of the soul for companionship was shaping itself into language so intensely irresistible, that it went to every heart with the fleetness of the lightning’s flash.
Only one feeling prevailed throughout that great assembly—admiration for the noble character of the beautiful woman sitting there before them, whose flushed cheek and lowered eyelids evidenced the modesty of her womanhood.
As soon as a pause was reached by the instrument, the enthusiasm of the people could be restrained no longer. Men testified their approval in true English fashion by the heartiest round of applause as was never before heard in that soberly-conducted Justice Hall. When the excitement had somewhat subsided, Mercia rose to her feet, and turning her gaze with an air of modest dignity upon the people, she addressed them.—
‘Dear friends—until this moment, I knew not I possessed so many——’