Miriamne paused, and Rizpah wept a little.
“Shall I go on or pause, mother?”
“Go on, dear.”
“But you weep, are you ill?”
“Oh, no, except in memory. This is sweet sorrow, that beats us back and forth; contrasting dark endings with bright beginnings; heaven high hopings with black disappointments, and happy lives with our own, all interwoven with miseries. I walked once in the sweet illusions of bridal days, but an utter widowhood came before death called. That’s the worst bereavement.”
“But some marriages are all happiness, are they not?” queried the daughter.
“Some, but not many. That’s the rule. Most of them begin well enough, but wedded mates are not as wisely tender as lovers; they too soon entomb all their joys in graves of selfishness and lust. So then the dove flies from the blossom of espousal never to return.”
“Perhaps, such as they did not love enough to begin with and so separated?”
“Some who would die for each other before marriage, would die to be quit of each other, after. Hence the brood of suicides, and that blackest crime of all, murder, which often raises its treacherous, cruel head within the marriage chamber.”