low), "all has come back to me,--all that I owe to your protecting, noble,
trustful, guardian love!"

"Hush! hush! the gratitude rests with me; it is so sweet to love, to
trust, to guard! my own, my beautiful--still my beautiful! Suffering has
not dimmed the light of those dear eyes to me! Put your lips to my
ear. Whisper but these words: 'I love you, and for your sake I wish to
live.'"

"For your sake, I pray--with my whole weak human heart--I pray to live!
Listen. Some day hereafter, if I am spared, under the purple blossoms of
yonder waving trees I shall tell you all, as I see it now; all that
darkened or shone on me in my long dream, and before the dream closed
around me, like a night in which cloud and star chase each other! Some
day hereafter, some quiet, sunlit, happy, happy day! But now, all I would
say is this: Before that dreadful morning--" Here she paused, shuddered,
and passionately burst forth, "Allen, Allen! you did not believe that
slanderous letter! God bless you! God bless you! Great-hearted,
high-souled--God bless you, my darling! my husband! And He will! Pray to
Him humbly as I do, and He will bless you." She stooped and kissed away
my tears; then she resumed, feebly, meekly, sorrowfully,--

"Before that morning I was not worthy of such a heart, such a love as
yours. No, no; hear me. Not that a thought of love for another ever
crossed me! Never, while conscious and reasoning, was I untrue to you,
even in fancy. But I was a child,--wayward as the child who pines for
what earth cannot give, and covets the moon for a toy. Heaven had been so
kind to my lot on earth, and yet with my lot on earth I was secretly
discontented. When I felt that you loved me, and my heart told me that I
loved again, I said to myself, 'Now the void that my soul finds on earth