“I will take a last look,” he thought, as he went up to the window.
“Cherokee, Cherokee,” but his whisper was too deep, she did not hear. There she stood before the painting, her arms wide open as though ready to enfold the image; then she drew back, and her low sobbing was heard—not despair, not sorrow, not even loss flowed in those relieving tears—they came as a balm, allowing the pent-up force of suffering to ooze out.
The very purity of her adoration was pitiful to see. Marrion stood outside and watched her; wrong as it might be to stay he was tempted to bide the result and remain.
Everything around was still; the wind, even, ceased to dip into the lustrous gloom of the laurels. He could scarcely hear the stream below, drawing its long ripples of star-kindled waves from the throat of the forest. Not a human sound interposed one pulse of its beating between these two silent souls.
“I must, I must touch her—just to say good-bye again.”
But through the gentle silence there throbbed a warning. He battled with it; the mad desire grew upon him, the stress, the self-torture was getting beyond control. Reckless inconsideration told him to enter.
The palpitating misery that swayed through every wave of his blood, cried in almost an ecstacy of terror: “Go in, she is yours.” He knew he could not resist what love counseled if he remained much longer, and he hung his head for very shame.
When a proud man finds out he is but a child in the midst of his strength, but a fool in his wisdom, it is humiliating to own it even to himself.
While every passion held him enslaved, he felt a vague desire to escape, a yearning, almost insane, to get out from his own self.