“You ought to teach me, not I you; but you remember you told me of the belief of some in ‘penetrative virginity.’ That is the purity of Mary passing somehow into others. Oh, all I am that’s good, be in you, and more, even all that she was whom you so revere; I mean the mother of the Christ.”
“In my soul I reverently exclaim ‘amen,’ but then again, how strange the question will not down, ‘must we part?’” And so saying he flung his arm about the woman, passionately embracing her. He thought for a moment he had overcome her, but the kiss on her lips not resisted, was the end; for slowly untwining his arms and holding his hands at arm’s length, she questioned: “Will you promise me one thing?”
“Surely, yes, name it.”
“That you will think of me as a friend, sister, henceforth, and let me go my way without further misery?”
The man struggled with himself for a time; then gazed into her eyes with a most piteously appealing gaze.
She was firm.
“Yes—I promise, but say affianced, to be wed in heaven?”
“God bless you,” was her instant response. Their lips met and the debate was ended.
And so for the time they separated, persuading themselves that the whole matter between them had been finally sealed. They had all faith in their pledges mutually given, each to live apart from the other. As yet they had no just conception of the power of a rebel heart constantly uprising. Of course, they both foresaw a measure of wretchedness in the future as a consequence of their decision, but distant pain foreseen by the young, is ever dimmed by hope, and very different from present pain. These twain comforted themselves, at first, by the thought that they were martyrs, and it is always agreeable to feel ourself a martyr, especially when expecting a martyr’s reward; at least it is so until the reality of the martyrdom comes.
The sky grew darker, night shut down about the ship, the winds increased, and that sense of awful loneliness, felt on the eve of an impending night-storm at sea, came to all hearts but those of the sailors. The latter were too busy to think of aught but their duties. Then their captain had his reckonings, and assured them by his bearing that he felt confident that he could outride this storm as he had often before similar ones. Miriamne, yielding not more to the captain’s command, than to the entreaties of Woelfkin, went below to her cabin. She soon courted sleep to help her forget the war of the tempest, praying a prayer most fitting, meanwhile. The prayer was a meditation, like unto this: “He that cares for all will care for helpless me, and come what may, keep me until that last great day.” The storm strengthened, and she began to be anxious for her father, and her friend. She had said to herself the latter title should define Cornelius. But her heart forgot its fear a moment in a mysterious, merry peal of laughter; such laughter is very real, but it is never heard by human ears. We know it only in those exalted moments when we try fine introspections; when there seems to be two of us; the one observing and entering into the other. Miriamne heard that laughter when she meditated, “Cornelius is just a friend.” Presently she became more anxious for those aloft. Then a troop of imperious inner questions came to her: “Might I not stand by him, if the danger increases? Would it be wrong to show him that I am brave and loving?”