“Oh! he did—he did, but I scorned and insulted him, and it is past, past!”
“There is no past tense to real love, lady.”
“Ah, Catherine, you speak of what you have had no experience in. My scorn killed his love.”
“Real love is immortal, lady, it cannot be killed.”
“Ah, child, you speak without knowledge.”
“Without experimental knowledge, Miss Clifton. And all the highest truths we have are obtained without experimental knowledge. I know that true affection is undying, by the same light that without the Bible shows me that God exists—that He made all souls, and that all souls are immortal. It is one of the ‘self-evident’ truths. Ah, Miss Clifton, true affection can no more be killed by scorn, than an angel could be overcome by a demon, than Heaven could be conquered by hell. In the contest between true affection and scorn, it is affection must conquer—scorn must yield. It must be so, lady. The heavens are pledged to it. The sovereignty of the right is involved in it. And when, in such a contest, affection fails, it is because it never was true. No, lady, true affection is never conquered. It is scorn that is conquered. It is scorn that has yielded now. You do not scorn him now, lady.”
“No—I would I could!”
“Then, in the death of your own scorn see the immortality of his love. He will come back to you. He will come back the first free moment that he has.”
“Ah, Catherine! In all this fifteen months he has not written to me.”
“You do not know that, Miss Carolyn. I believe that he has written to you, and that the letter has been lost. You know how irregular and uncertain the mail is from that distant frontier.”