"Try 'Divided.'"
She dared not refuse lest he should despise her utterly, interpreting correctly her reluctance. For an instant the print danced before her, but the spirit of defiance was fast mastering her trepidation, and she sat erect, and obeyed him.
Thrusting one hand inside his vest, where it rested tightly clenched over his heart, Mr. Palma sat intently watching her, glad of the privilege afforded him to study the delicate features. Her excessive paleness reminded him of the words:
"That white, white face, set in a night of hair,"
and though the chastening touch of sorrow and continued heart-ache—that most nimble of all chisellers—had strangely matured the countenance which when it entered that house was as free from lines and shadows as an infant's, it still preserved its almost child-like purity and repose.
The proud fair face, with its firm yet dainty scarlet lips, baffled him; and when he reflected that a hundred contingencies might arise to shut it from his view in future years he suddenly compressed his mouth to suppress a groan. His vanity demanded an assurance that her heart was as entirely his as he hoped, yet he knew that he loved her all the more tenderly, and reverently, because of the true womanly delicacy that prompted her to shroud her real feelings, with such desperate tenacity.
She read the poem with skill and pathos, but no undue tremor of the smooth, deliciously sweet voice betrayed aught save the natural timidity of a tyro, essaying her first critical trial. Tonight she wore a white shawl draped in statuesque folds over her shoulders and bust, and the snowy flowers in her raven hair were scarcely purer than her full forehead, borne up by the airy arched black bows that had always attracted the admiration of her fastidious guardian; and as the soft radiance of the clustered lamps fell upon her, she looked as sweet and lovely a woman as ever man placed upon the sacred hearth of his home, a holy priestess to keep it bright, serene, and warm.
On that same day, but a few hours earlier, she had perused these pages, wondering how the unknown gifted poetess beyond the sea had so accurately etched the suffering in her own young heart, the loneliness and misery that seemed coiled in the future like serpents in a lair. Now, holding that bruised palpitating heart under the steel-clad heel of pride, she was calmly declaiming that portraiture of her own wretchedness, as any elocutionist might a grand passage from the "Antigone," or "Prometheus." Not a throb of pain was permitted to ripple the rich voice that uttered:
"But two are walking apart for ever,
And wave their hands in a mute farewell."
Farther on, nearing the close, Mr. Palma observed a change in the countenance, a quick gleam in the eyes, a triumphant ring in the deep and almost passionate tone that cried exultingly: