“Not one word of them!” she promptly answered.
An impulsive kiss and a sob!
“Dear Mother!” she said in a low tearful voice. “And now one more. Papa has been dinning into my ears his own fickleness in love when young and the fact that he knows in a long life that love is of little importance in a man’s existence. He says that I can forget and love again with equal intensity and bet’ter judgment. Can one treat thus lightly the soul’s deepest instincts and still find life rich and worthy of effort?” Her voice broke and she continued slowly and tremblingly, as she held one of her mother’s hands tightly, “Now, Mama dear, heart to heart, tell me as you would talk in your inmost soul to God, do you believe this is true? You have sounded life’s deep meaning Is this all you know of life? You love me. Tell me truly?”
“No, darling, a woman can not deny this deep yearning of her soul and live. I would tear my tongue out sooner than deceive you in such an hour.”
“Sweet Mother!” she softly murmured again as she kissed her good night.
CHAPTER XII—THE SPLENDOUR OF SHAMELESS LOVE
WHEN Gaston received her telegram in jail he was seated by a window looking out through the bars on Mt. Pisgah’s distant peak looming in grandeur amid a sea of smaller blue mountain waves. He read the message and his soul was filled with a great peace.
“At last! at last! These prison bars, they are good! I could kiss them. I can never be grateful enough to my enemies!”