But they were
generous and affectionate, and it was easy to evoke these feelings. The
one thing absent from the whole place was any touch of sentimentality,
which arises from natural affections suppressed into a giggling kind of
secrecy. They expressed affection loudly and frankly, just as they
expressed indignation and annoyance. All the while I kept Cynthia in my
heart; she was ever before me in a thousand sweet postures and with
innumerable glances. But I saw much of my sturdy and wholesome-minded
old friend; and the sore pain of parting faded away out of my heart, and
left me with nothing but the purest and deepest love, which helped me in
all I did or said, and made me patient and tender-hearted. And thus the
period sped not unhappily away, though I had my times of agony and
despair.
XXXII
I became aware at this time, very gradually and even solemnly, that some
crisis of my life was approaching. How the monition came to me I hardly
know; I felt like a man wandering in the dark, with eyes strained and
hands outstretched, who is dimly aware of some great object, tree or
haystack or house, looming up ahead of him, which he cannot directly
see, but of which he is yet conscious by the vibration of some sixth
sense.
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