Both tread thy banks, both wander on thy shore,
I near thy source, she by the dark blue deep.
She will look on thee,—I have look’d on thee.
Full of that thought: and from that moment, ne’er
Thy waters could I dream of, name or see,
Without the inseparable sigh for her!”
For whom had he longed when he wrote? For the woman whose child—his child, denied him now!—was hidden in the convent below? No! The mist of anguish melted. She felt her bitterness ebbing fast away.
What else mattered? Nothing! Not what this convent held! Not all his past, though even the worst of all the tales she had ever heard were true; though what the pamphlet at her feet alleged were true a thousand times over—though it were the worst crime of all man punished on earth! Nothing, nothing! At this moment she knew that, for all the dreams of God bred in her, without him, prayers and faiths and life itself went for naught as human hearts are made.
Clasping her hands she read to the end:
“Her bright eyes will be imaged in thy stream,—