Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Rezanov by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
page 6 of 289 (02%)
passion flames. This child woman will go with him.
Ah, but the church, the king of Spain, will they per-
mit? And the Czar! Rezanov will see to it that the
Czar will clear the way for them through power
exercised at Rome and at Madrid. Conditioned
upon this, the girl's parents consent.

These lovers prate very little of love. Their
desire runs too deep for mere speech. It is a desire
made up of as much spiritual as carnal fire. It is
fierce but steady in ecstacy and agony, indistinguish-
able the one from the other. Rezanov, man of the
great world, it purifies. Concha it strengthens and
makes indomitable. They will abide delay. They
will endure in faith and hope--the faith and hope
both dimmed by the vague and unshakable intui-
tion or premonition that fate has marked them for
derision. Nevertheless, they will endure.

There is a meeting on a path that overlooks where
the white seas strike their tents. It is a meeting of
little action, of few words. It is tense with the
almost inexpressible, but at its end, confronting the
doubtful future, realizing that when Rezanov goes
he may not return, this girl tells him: "I will give
myself to you forever, how much or little that may
mean here on earth. Forever!" And then that
scene in the moonlight amid the scent of the Cas-
tilian roses, when Concha, as signal of her trust in
her lover, lifts the little wisps of hair that conceal
DigitalOcean Referral Badge