Not suddenly did she surrender her womanhood, but slowly, as hope after hope failed, and all her efforts were met with a foul distrust.
The years that came and went by, bringing happiness to many, brought none to her. One night the angel of death stole noiselessly to her side, and took her only earthly comfort,—her child. His fair face and innocent smile had repaid her a hundred fold for the frowns of the world she had met. Now she had no moorings, no anchor in the broad sea of existence.
“I shall die some day,” she said, “and perhaps the angels will forgive me.” So she walked alone, and cared not what came to her life, or filled the measure of her days on earth.
Miss Evans sat alone in her home, musing, as she had often done. She had just been reading passages from “Dream Life,” having opened the book at random to a chapter entitled, “A Broken Hope.” Was life mocking her at every step? She turned the pages listlessly, and “Peace” flashed before her vision. Peace, at last. No matter how great the struggle, rest shall be ours. We may not attain what we have striven for on earth, but peace will come, and the “rest which the world knows not of.”
But her mind did not feel the promise then. Life seemed growing dull, insipid. The course of the chariot wheels of progress, were impeded. What had become of her earnest, working self, whose deepest happiness was in laboring for humanity? Why were her hands so idle, and her mind so listless? Question rose on question, until her mind seemed plunging into a sea whose troubled waves moaned and dashed against her life-bark, giving her spirit no repose. Why was she floating on this restless sea?
A hand was laid upon her shoulder. She turned, and the warm blood tinged her cheeks and brow.
“Hugh!”
“Arline!”
It was the first time for years that the sound of her own name had thrilled her so deeply.
He sat by her, took her hands in his own, and had never seemed to belong to her so much as in that hour.