"Cruel!" repeated he; then, losing his deathlike composure in a
wild bitterness: "Heaven judge which of us has been cruel to the
other! In youth you deprived me of my happiness, my hopes, my
aims; you took 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--nor 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