What is that power which enchains men and women for a season when death itself would be preferable to the bitter sweetness which fills the soul. The heart never entirely recovers, though by and by the pain is a dull heavy sorrow as for a loved one buried long ago? We pity ourselves then, to think that it is possible for us to so change.
Dainty could not move hand or foot, her eyes looked as if tears lay behind in the veiled depths, in sacred sympathy with the soul, in the throes of an agony which few are capable of understanding.
Great beads of perspiration stood on her brow; she tried to speak, but ended in an incoherent whisper. Her lover recognised the suffering of her soul, akin to his own, and wiped the cold dews away with a holy touch. There was no flaming consuming passion in his touch. How strange was this in a nature like Herr Schwatka’s! It was one of the marvels of love that it could purify the impulses and purposes of such a man, not used to live above the moral plane of the careless man of the world. He might easily have wrought ruin in the life of this unsophisticated woman, who could not, in one remove from savage ancestry, grow away from the tendency of love to follow its own, regardless of consequences. So had her mother done. Raising herself, and looking him steadfastly in the eyes, she slowly said, in an earnest whisper: “If you go, I go with you.”
“No, no, Dainty, I love you too truly to let you live to repent anything for my sake. Donald will not return to you until evening. I must go while I have any manliness left, or we will both live to repent it.”
There was silence for a few moments, and then he hesitatingly said:
“I want to make a confession, sweetheart, that will help to ease my pain.” He stopped and his bosom heaved with emotion. “It is that—I was fascinated by you, and your untamed ways, so different from what I had ever known, and I thought you would be a pastime to me. See what misery my wrong has wrought to both. You are the one woman in the world stronger than I, who thought myself invincible. You have made me your prisoner.”
Anger against her fate began to rise within her heart, and strange thoughts surged and swelled through her throbbing brain. She spoke with wild determination:
“Listen. Donald is keeping some great secret from me, and although he has no suspicion of the love existing between you and me, his life is as separated from mine as if we were living in different continents. My life is my own, and if you leave me, I follow.”
“No, no, my beloved,” cried Schwatka.
Dainty continued in the same voice: