You
were mine, Hyacinth; heart and mind were consenting, when your convent-bred
sister surprised us, and all my hopes of bliss expired in a sermon. And now
I can but say, with that witty rhymester, whom everybody in London quotes--
'Love in your heart as idly burns,
As fire in antique Roman urns.'
"Good-bye, which means 'God be with you.' I know not if the fear of Him was
in your mind when you sacrificed your lover to that icy abstraction women
call virtue. The Romans had but one virtue, which meant the courage that
dares; and to me the highest type of woman would be one whose bold spirit
dared and defied the world for love's sake. These are the women history
remembers, and whom the men who live after them worship. Cleopatra,
Mary Stuart, Diana of Poictiers, Marguerite de Valois, la Chevreuse, la
Montbazon! Think you that these became famous by keeping their lovers at a
distance?
"'Go, lovely rose!'
"How often I have sung those lines, and you have listened, and nothing
has come of it; except time wasted, smiles, sighs, and tears, that ever
promised, and ever denied. Beauty, too choice to be kind, adieu!
"DE MALFORT."
When she had read these last words, she crushed the letter in her palm,
clenching her fingers over it till the nails wounded the delicate flesh;
and then she opened her hand, and employed herself in smoothing out the
crumpled paper, as if her life depended on making the letter readable
again.
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