He stretched his arms out toward that thrilling voice,
As if to draw it on to his embrace.
I take her as God made her, and as men
Must fail to unmake her, for my honor’d wife.
E. B. Browning.
Paradise itself could hardly hold an hour of purer and more perfect bliss than when those two young creatures stood holding each other’s hands and confessing their mutual love.
To Nea it was happiness, the happiness for which she had secretly longed. To Maurice it was a dazzling dream, a madness, an unreality, from which he must wake up to doubt his own sanity—to tremble and disbelieve.
And that awakening came all too soon.
Through the long hours of the night he lay and pondered, till with the silence and darkness a thousand uneasy thoughts arose that cooled the fever in his veins and made him chill with the foreboding of evil.
What had he done? Was he mad? Had it been all his fault that he had betrayed his love? Had he not been sorely tempted? and yet, would not a more honorable man have left her without saying a word?