away all the substance of my life and made it a dream without reality
enough even to grieve at--with only a pervading gloom, through which I
walked wearily and cared not whither. But after forty years, when I
have built my tomb and would not give up the thought of resting
there--no, not for such a life as we once pictured--you call me to the
altar. At your summons I am here. But other husbands have enjoyed your
youth, your beauty, your warmth of heart and all that could be termed
your life. What is there for me but your decay and death? And
therefore I have bidden these funeral-friends, and bespoken the
sexton's deepest knell, and am come in my shroud to wed you as with a
burial-service, that we may join our hands at the door of the
sepulchre and enter it together."

It was not frenzy, it was not merely the drunkenness of strong emotion
in a heart unused to it, that now wrought upon the bride. The stern
lesson of the day had done its work; her worldliness was gone. She
seized the bridegroom's hand.

"Yes!" cried she; "let us wed even at the door of the sepulchre. My
life is gone in vanity and emptiness, but at its close there is one
true feeling. It has made me what I was in youth: it makes me worthy
of you. Time is no more for both of us. Let us wed for eternity."

With a long and deep regard the bridegroom looked into her eyes, while
a tear was gathering in his own. How strange that gush of human
feeling from the frozen bosom of a corpse! He wiped away the tear,
even with his shroud.

"Beloved of my youth," said he, "I have been wild. The despair of my
whole lifetime had returned at once and maddened me. Forgive and be