Jack Bigelowwent up to Yokohama, where the Tokyo detectives thought they had a clew to the girls whereabouts. A new and very beautiful geisha had appeared among the dancing-girls, and as no one seemed to know anything about her history it was thought that she might be the missing Yuki. But she had disappeared only the day before his arrival there.
Jack spent a month in the big metropolis, shadowing the tea-gardens, and watching, with the assistance of men he had hired, every geisha house and garden; but though many girls apparently answering to the descriptionof Yuki were brought before him, none of them proved to be the missing girl, and the disgust the young man experienced at their total unlikeness to his wife was only equalled by his bitter disappointment.
A telegram from police headquarters brought him back to Tokyo. Here he was told that the detectives had traced the missing girl to Nagasaki, a seaport on the western coast of Kiushu. This was the city where Yukis father had first lived in Japan. He had been the son of a rich silk merchant, and had come to Japan in order to extend his knowledge of the silk trade and expand his fathers business. But Stephen Burton had become infatuated with the country, had married a Japanese wife, assimilated the ways of her people, and in time had even become a naturalized citizen. He never returned alive to his native England, though strange, cold, red-bearded men had taken his body from the wife, and had crossed the seas with it.
Old Sir Stephen Burton had never forgiven what he considered themésallianceof his son, and hence Taro and Yuki had never seen or known any of their fathers people, and he himself had died while they were yet children.
Some feeling of sentiment might have brought Yuki to this place. Moreover, there were many public tea-houses there, where she could quickly find employment. The police were positive in their statements that they were not mistaken in the identity of the girl they claimed to be Yuki.
Travelling by slow and tedious trains, with no sleeping accommodations and but few of the modern luxuries that are necessities on American trains; travelling by kurumma, with the flying heels of his runners scattering the dust of the highway in his eyes, when the landscape before, behind, and around him seemed a maze of dazzling blue; travelling on foot, when he was toorestless to do otherwise than tramp, he was weary and ill when he finally, reached Nagasaki. Here an amazing horde of nakodas pestered him with their offerings of matrimonial happiness. He had no heart for them. They stifled him with memories that were better sleeping.
The tea-house to which he had been directed was owned and run by an elderly geisha, who, in her day, had been noted for her own beauty and cleverness. She was all affectation and grace now. She met Jack with exaggerated expressions of welcome, and in a sweet, sibilant voice pressed upon him the comforts and entertainments of her poor place.
He did not pause to exchange compliments with her.
Was there not in her house a girl, very beautiful and very young, who sang and danced?
Madam Pine-leaf (that was her name) allowed her face to betray surprisedamusement at the question. Why, her place was famous for the beauty of her maidens, and every one of them danced and sang more bewitchingly than the fairies themselves. But she only said, very humbly:
My maidens are all unworthily fair, and all of them indulge in the honorable dance and song. It is part of the accomplishment of every geisha.
Yes, but you could not mistake this girl. She is distinct from all others. She—her eyes are blue. She is only half Japanese!
Ah-h!—a half-caste. Madam Pine-leafs lips formed in amoue. She was very polite, however. She pretended to consult her mind. Then she begged that he would remain, at all events, and see for himself all her girls.
Impatiently he waited, a terrible nervousness taking possession of him at the mere possibility that Yuki might be near him. But though he scanned with almost seeming rudeness the facesof the inmates of the place, none of them was like unto her whom he sought.
When he paid his hostess, who, recognizing in him a generous patron, had been careful to stay close by him the entire evening, his face betrayed his exceeding disappointment.
The woman glanced at the big fee in her hand, and a feeling of pity and gratitude called up all her native prevarication.
Now that she had spent the whole evening turning the matter over in her mind, she recalled the fact that only a few days before a girl answering exactly to his description of his wife had worked for her for a short period, but unfortunately she had left her and gone to Osaka.
Madam Pine-leafs face was guileless, her words convincing. There was gentle compassion in her eyes, which added to the comfort of her words.
Jack wrung her slim hands gratefully till they ached.
Osaka? How far away was that? Did Madam Pine-leaf believe he had time to get there before she would leave? What was the exact address?
Yes, she believed he would be in time, and she drew out a dainty tablet and wrote an address upon it, and with deep and graceful obeisances she prayed that the gods would accompany and guide him.
He reached Osaka at night, when its many strange canals and narrow rivers were reflecting the lights of the city, like glittering spear-heads, on their dark, shining surface. The hotel was miles from the station, but the streets were deserted, and there was no traffic to hinder the flying feet of his runner. At night the city seemed strangely romantic and peaceful, a spot that would have attracted one of Yukis temperament. But daylight revealed it as it was—a bustling commercial centre, where everybody seemedhurrying as though bent on accomplishing some important mission.
Jack stayed but a few days in Osaka. She was not there. The proprietor of the Osaka gardens, hearing his story, humbly apologized for the fact that while such a girl had honored for a short season his unworthy gardens, she had left him now some days ago. Whither had she gone? To Kyoto.
And in Kyoto, the most fascinating and beautiful city in all Japan, he was sent from one tea-house to another, each proprietor acknowledging that one answering to the description had been in his employ, but declaring that she had left only a short time previous. She was only a visiting geisha, who moved from place to place.
Finally he traced her back to Tokyo, the place whence he had started on his weary pilgrimage. She was the chief geisha, so he was told, of the Sanzaeyemon gardens. With his brain swimming, his lips almost refusing himspeech, he went straightway to this place. The proprietor received him with magnificent humility, and, listening to his disjointed questions, answered that all was well. She was even then within his honorably miserable tea-house. For the privilege of seeing her he would be obliged to make an honorably insignificant charge, and, if he (the august barbarian) desired to take her away with him, a further fee must be forthcoming.
Waiving these questions aside, by putting down so much coin that the little proprietors eyes matched its glisten, he followed him up the stairway to the private quarters of the more important geishas. Into one of the rooms he was unceremoniously ushered.
A girl who sat on a mat put forward her two hands, and her bowed head on top of them. Jack watched her with bated breath. He could not see her face, and the room was badly lighted. But when he could bear no longer her perpetual bowing and had lifted her,with hands that shook, to her feet, he saw her face. It was that of a stranger!
A slight illness now hindered the progress of his search, but he would not allow himself the rest he needed; and still ill, haggard, and a shadow of his former self, the young man once more drifted to the metropolitan police station.
They had exhausted all their clews, but they were kind-hearted little men, these Japanese policemen. The chief of police invented a story that would have done credit to one of Japans poets.
Yuki was somewhere in the vicinity of Matsushima Bay, on the northeastern coast of Japan, near the city of Sendai, where the waters flow into the Pacific. This was a spot favored by unhappy lovers, and the chief of police had positive evidence that a girl answering to her description had been seen wandering daily in that part of the country. He even produced a telegraph blank,with an indecipherable message in Japanese characters written on it, purporting to give this information. His advice to the young man was to go to this honorable place and stay there for some time. The country was large thereabouts. He might not find her at once, but soon or late surely she would turn up there.
Jack was impressed with his glib recital, and then, moreover, he remembered that Yuki had told him much about this place, which they had planned to visit together some day. He started straightway for it, buoyed up with a hope he had not known in months.
And the chief of police snapped his fingers and bobbed his head and clinked the big fee he had received.
These foreign devils are naïve, he said to an assistant.
The cringing assistant agreed. They believe any august lie, he replied.
His superior frowned. It was for his good, after all, he returned, tartly.
In the city of Sendai Jack put up at a small Japanese hostelry, and from there each day he would start out and wander down to the beach of the wonderful bay. It was all as Yuki had pictured it, with her vivid, passionate imagery. There were the countless rocks of all sizes and forms scattered in it, with strange, shapely pine-trees growing up from them, and the one bare rock called Hadakajima, or Naked Island, and all the beautiful romances, impossible and dreamy as the fairy tales of a classic Oriental poet, that she had woven about and around this place, came back to his mind now, haunting him like a beautiful dream, until the memory of her, and the influence of the beauty of the place, seemed to cast a mystic spell about him.
For, oh! the scenes that enwrapped the bay! The slopes and hillocks andthe great mountains beyond were garbed in vestal white, pure and glistening. The snowflakes had tipped the branches of the pine, and there they hung, like glistening pearl-drops, sometimes dropping with little bounds on the rocks, there to freeze or melt into the bay.
And some vague fancy, baffling in its hopelessness, nevertheless, clung to him that possibly she might have come hither to this peaceful spot, far from the scenes where they had loved and suffered so deeply, for, with unerring insight, Jack knew that she had loved him. Bit by bit he traced backward in his mind every proof she had given him of this, and now, when the sorrow of her loss seemed more than he could bear, the knowledge of this upheld and cheered him always.
But the beauty of Matsushima could give him no peace of mind or soul, for he was alone! The stillness and silence of the very atmosphere, the tall pine-trees, bending gracefully in theswaying, swinging breezes, seemed to mock him with their calm content. The bay was enchanted—yes, but haunted too—haunted by the imagination of the little feet that had perhaps wandered along its shore.
In a little village only a short distance from the beach, inhabited by a few simple, honest fisher-folk, Jack tried to ascertain whether they had seen aught of her he sought. But they babbled fairy stories back at him. There had been many, many witch-maids who had haunted the shores of Matsushima; many young girls, who had lost their minds through unfortunate love affairs, had wandered thither. They were the ghosts of these unfortunate lovers, who had sought in death the bliss of love denied them in life, which now haunted the shore of the bay.
That the strange, fair man who had lost his bride would meet the same untimely though poetic fate the simple people never doubted.
And so, like one who has lost his soul, he wandered hither and thither throughout the islands of Japan in search of it.
Sunshine had been the dominant element in Jack Bigelows character, and in a less degree impulsiveness and generosity. No one had ever given him credit for intensity of feeling or greatness of purpose. But sometimes tribulation will bring out such qualities, which have lain hidden beneath an apparently superficial exterior.
A deep, abiding love for his summer bride had sprung into eternal life in his heart. She was never absent from his mind. There were moments when for a time he would forget his immeasurable loss, and would drift into memory, and in fancy re-live with her that dream summer. She had become the soul of him. She would remain in his heart until it ceased to beat.
HadJack followed Yuki on the night she went out of his house and life, he would have known that she was not to be found in all Japan. She had hurried from his and Taros presence with but one object—to take herself forever from the sight of the brother whom she had loved but who had repulsed her, whom she had dishonored in trying to assist. She took the road for Tokyo, and, head downward, sobbing like a little child who has lost its way in the dark, stumbled blindly along until she had come within its limits.
She had no idea whither she was going now, what she would do; her mindcould only contain her grief. But as she wandered aimlessly about, weeping silently, an address slipped itself into her consciousness—the address written on the card handed her by the American theatrical man months before, when he had followed her from the tea-house. She had studied the card curiously at the time, and now, though the name had escaped her—she had really never been able to make it out—her mind still held the address.
She turned in the direction in which she knew the Americans house lay, and at length found it, wearied both by the anguish of her mind and by her long walk. Yes, the American gentleman was in, said the garrulous Japanese servant who answered her timid summons. He had returned from lands far south less than a week ago, and now in two more days he would be off again. Did she want to meet him? Perhaps he slept.
Yuki said she would speak with himbut a minute, and the servant vanished. Almost immediately the manager appeared before her, frowning heavily. But at sight of her his face brightened wonderfully.
Why, if it aint the girl I heard sing at the tea-garden! he cried. Come right inside.
And he eagerly drew her, unresisting, within.
Two days later, on board theYokohama Maru, Yuki left her native Japan.
As the ship weighed anchor, she closed her eyes and faintly clung to the guard-rail. All about her she could hear the passengers talking and laughing, a few were cheering and waving flags and handkerchiefs to friends on shore. And long after the wharf was only a dim, shadowy outline she still clung there to the rail, her hands cold and tense.
Some one put an arm about her, and she started as though she had been struck.
You are not ill already, you poor little thing? said a womans clear, pleasing voice.
Yuki regarded her piteously. She dimly recognized in her the wife of her employer, and she struggled to regain her scattered wits, but vainly. She was only able to look up into the sympathetic face of the other with eyes which could not conceal the turbulent tragedy of her soul.
Why, you are shivering all over, and are as cold as—Jimmy, come over here, she turned and called peremptorily to her husband, who hastened forward, throwing his cigar overboard.
Look here; shes sick already. Better send one of those ayah women, or whatever you call em, over, and have her put to bed right away.
They undressed her, submissive as a little child, and put her into the berth of a little stateroom, which seemed to Yuki, who had never in her life before been on board a vessel of any sort, savethe tiny craft about the rivers at her home, like a tiny cage or vault, wherein she, exhausted and weary, had been put to die.
She lay there with the surging bustle of the ships noises overhead and the tremulous growl of the waters beneath the ship droning in her ears like the melancholy ringing of a dying curfew-bell at twilight.
The ayah reported to the managers wife, an ex-comic-opera prima donna, that she was resting and sleeping; but when that impetuous, big-hearted woman peeped in on her, she found Yukis eyes wide open. She whirled into the small stateroom, almost filling it with her large person, and sat down beside the poor little weary girl and looked at her with friendly and approving eyes.
You are like a pretty picture on a fan, she said; the prettiest Japanese girl Ive seen. I think well be fine friends, dont you?
Yuki could only assent with a wearylittle nod of her head. She closed her eyes.
You are not so dreadfully sick, are you? said the American. I thought maybe we could have a nice little gossip together. You see, my husbands the boss of this whole outfit that weve got along with us, and I dont know that theres one of the whole lot Ive ever cared to associate with before. Youre different. Now, aint I good to speak out just whats on my mind, eh?
Ioughtto thang you, said Yuki, feebly, but I am too weary to be perlite.
Then you shall be left alone, you child, you, said the other; then she kissed Yuki lightly, and went out of the door.
But after she had gone Yukis passivity left her. She sat up quivering, and then with nervous quickness she began to dress herself. She could not open the door of the stateroom. Shewas unused to strange doors that required the pushing of springs and bolts. She had lived in a land where bolts and locks were almost unknown, where a shoji fell apart at a touch of a hand. Now she pushed hard against the door, but, as she had not turned the handle, it refused to move. A terror possessed her that they had locked her in this tiny, awful cell, to which penetrated no light save that which filtered through a small porthole against which the waters beat and beat.
She flung herself desperately against the door, battering it with her tiny hands; she felt herself growing dizzy and blind as the ship rocked and swayed beneath her feet. She tried to pace the tiny length of the stateroom, her sense of terrible loneliness and homesickness deepening with every moment. The moving of the ship horrified her, and the knowledge that it was taking her farther and farther from her home across the immense bottomless sea filledher with a terror akin to nothing She had ever known in her life before.
In the sickening, wearying dazzle of the few days previous to their sailing, the girls mind had held but one thought—to go far away from the scenes of her pain; now perhaps the reaction had come, and her terror at the step she had taken appalled her. Memory, which had been thrust out of sight by the ever-present nagging pain that had blinded her to all else, now asserted its power, merciless and invincible. She pressed her hands to her head, as though to blot out forever from her mind the pitiless ghosts that haunted her.
Like the wraiths that come and vanish in a nightmare, the events of her life came to her one by one—the happy childhood with her brother, their passionate devotion to each other, her grief at his departure for America, the months of struggle that had followed, sacrifices made for him, her attempts to make a living sufficient for his maintenance inAmerica, and then—her marriage! After that, memory held no other thought but the immeasurable craving and longing that was almost madness for the voice, the touch, the sight of the man she had loved and left.
It was three days before her illness ended. Then, having begged the consent of the woman who attended her, she crept up the companion-way and out on deck, where the passengers were disporting and enjoying themselves.
She had looked forward to the time when she would regain sufficient strength to leave her prison-cell, for such she regarded her stateroom. In the strange medley of ideas which had curiously woven themselves into a maze in her mind, she had imagined that once in the open on deck she would see once more the shores of her home, Fujiyamas lofty peak smiling against its celestial background, and hanging like a mirage in mid-air.
But there was no sight visible toher, as, with her hand shading her eyes, she looked out before her, save a vast, cold, pitiless waste of surging waters, jumping up to meet the sky, which smiled or glowered with its moods.
In the months that followed, Yuki met with nothing but kindness from the American theatrical manager and his wife. With them she went to China, India, the Philippines, and finally to Australia. From all these different points the American theatrical scout drew together a motley troupe of jugglers, fancy dancers, wizards, fencers, and performers of one sort and another, with which he hoped to make a larger fortune in America. He had combined business with this long pleasure trip, for he was on his bridal tour at the time.
By some remarkable intuition peculiar sometimes to the gayest and most frivolous hearted of women of the world, the wife of the theatrical manager hadgained some insight into the cause of the pitiful sensitiveness and shrinking shyness of the queer little Japanese girl with the blue eyes, to whom she had taken an extravagant fancy.
She had taken Yuki under her personal charge, and sheltered and shielded the girl from the overbold scrutiny of those with whom they daily came in contact. It was many months, however, before she learned her history. In fact, it was only a few days before their expected departure for America, the great country in the west, which seemed to Yuki as far distant as the stars above her.
As the time for their departure, which had been delayed already much longer than the manager had anticipated, drew nearer, Yuki grew more depressed and restless, so that to the exaggerated fancy of the American woman she seemed to be fading away and entering into what she emphatically called the last stages of consumption.
She cornered the girl relentlessly, and finally wrung from her the whole pitiful, tragic story of her life. How homesick and weary she had been ever since she had left Japan, how her heart seemed to faint whenever she thought of that final interview with her brother, and of the immeasurable longing for the man she loved, and whom she had married for jus liddle bid while.
All the big, romantic heart of the American woman went out to her as she took her into her arms and mingled her own honest tears with Yukis.
You shant go to America, she said, drying her eyes with a tiny piece of lace which served as a handkerchief. You are going right back to Japan, bag and baggage of you. Im going with you, to see you get there O.K.
Bud— began Yuki, weakly.
Never mind, now. I know he expects to sail in a week. I dont. Im boss! See!
Insummer the fields of Japan are alive with color—burning flat lowlands shimmering with the dazzling gleam of the natane and azalea blossoms. In autumn the leaves, as well as the blossoms, have caught all the tints of heaven and earth, and in winter the gods are said to be resting after their riotous ramblings during the warm months. But in the spring-time they awake, and in their lavish renewed youth bless hill and dale and meadow and forest with an abandon unlike any other time of year. It is the season of the cherry blossom, of the mating of the birds, the babblingof the brooks, and the chattering and unfolding anew of all the beauties of nature.
It was two years from the day when Jack and Yuki had married each other in the spring-time. And Jack was back in Tokyo. Recalled thither by a telegram from the police headquarters, he was preparing to depart for America, where the police claimed they had positive evidence that Yuki had gone. He was staying at an American hotel in the city proper, and his heart on this day sickened and yearned for the little house only a few miles away that he longed and yet dreaded to see again.
Now that he contemplated leaving Japan, the dread possibility that Yuki might still be in the country and that he would be placing the distance of thousands and thousands of miles of land and water between them, depressed and weighed on his mind, despite the really plausible proof the police board had that she had gone to Americawith a theatrical company—that of the very man he himself had witnessed coaxing her to go with him.
The afternoon previous to the day set for sailing, his melancholy and morbidness grew in intensity. With no fixed purpose in view he started out from his hotel, tramped half-way across Tokyo, then hailed a jinrikisha and gave the runner orders to take him to the little house that had formerly been his home, and which he had struggled against visiting ever since his return to Tokyo.
As in a dream the interminable stretch of rice-fields, blue mountains, and valleys and hamlets, stretching away into misty outlines, flashed by him, and he noted only half absently how the heels of his runner were all worn hard just as if they had dried in the sun. Yuki once had called his attention to this.
The honorable soles are the same, she had said. It is the perpetualrunning. The gods have mercifully protected the feet from pain.
The landscape about him, familiar as the face of a mother, gave him no pain now. He was conscious only of a sense of ineffable rest and peace, as a traveller who has wandered long feels when nearing home. And soon the runner had stopped with a jerk, and was doubling over and waiting for his pay.
Should he humbly wait for his excellency to condescend to return to the city?
Just for a little while, Jack told him absently. And he went through the little garden gate and up the pebbled adobe path, now arched on either side by two rows of cherry-blossom trees, that met at the top and made a bower under which to walk.
When he had pushed the door backward and stepped inside he paused irresolute, his heart paining him with its rapid beating. Coming from outthe blaze of the out-door light into the shadowed room, his vision dazzled him. But gradually the objects inside grew upon his consciousness, and a rosy pain, an ecstasy that stung him with its sweetness, shot upward like a dawn through all his being.
He scarcely dared breathe, so potent was the influence of the place upon him. He feared to stir, lest the spell, ghostly and entrancing as the influence of a magic hand, might vanish into mistland, for with all the immeasurable pain that rushed to his heart in a flame was mingled a tentative, exquisite pleasure—a survival of the old joy he had once known.
And there came back to his mind whisperings of the old mysterious romances she had been wont to ramble into. What was that tale of the spirit which haunted and was felt but never seen? Was there not behind it all some mysterious possibility of such a spirit? For the very furnishings of the room,the mats, the vases, the old broken-down hammock, and his big tobacco-bon, each and all of them suddenly assumed a personality—the personality of one he loved.
Stepping on tip-toe, he crossed the room and stooped to touch the little drum, the sticks of which were snapped in twain. And then he suddenly remembered how she had broken them because he had complained one day that her drum disturbed him. He had liked the koto and the samisen; the drum she had beaten on when she mocked him. Now the sight of it beat against his brain and heart.
He could not bear the sight of those little broken sticks. He tried to cover them with his handkerchief, as if they were the evidence of a crime.
The place is haunted! he said, and scarce knew his own hollow voice, which the echoes of the silent room mocked back at him.
I shall go mad, he said, and againthe echoes repeated, Mad! mad! mad!
Then he covered his eyes, and sat in the silence, motionless and still.
From afar off there came to him the melancholy sweetness of the bells of a neighboring temple. They caused his hearing exquisite pain. What memories were recalled by them! But now every toll of the bells, slow and muffled, seemed to speak of baffled hope and despair. There was no balm in their sweet monotone. Would they never cease? Why were they so loud? They had not been so formerly. Now they filled all the land with their ringing. What were they tolling for, and, ah, why had the ghostly visitants of his house caught up the tone, and softly, sweetly, with piercing cadence, chanted back and echoed the sighing of the bells?
The house was full of music, inexpressibly dear and familiar. He startedto his feet, trembling like one afflicted with ague. And gradually words, in a fairy language that he had learned to love, began to form themselves into the melody of a voice.
Slowly, painfully, like one led by unseen, subtle, persuasive hands, he went forward, and up and up the spiral stairs till he had reached her chamber, and there he stood, like one who has come far and can go no farther.
One other presence besides himself was within. This he knew, and still could not comprehend. He could see her plainly, just as she had been in life—her little, shining head, her dear, small hands, the long, blue, misty eyes, and the small mouth with the little pathetic droop that had come to it in the last few days they had been together. She stood with her hands raised, dreamily loitering before a mirror, putting cherry blossoms in her hair on either side of her head. But at the prolonged silence that ensued she turnedslowly about, and then she saw the man standing silently in the doorway.
She was not a girl to scream or faint, but she went gray with fear, and stood perfectly still there in the middle of the room. Then gradually her eyes travelled upward to the mans face, and there they remained transfixed.
For a long while they faced each other thus, both with hearts that seemed not to beat. Then the man made a movement towards her, a passionate, wild movement, and she had dropped the flowers from her hands, and had gone to meet him. The next moment he was crushing her to him. When he released her but a moment, it was to hold her again and yet again, as though he feared to find her gone, and his arms empty once more, as they had been for so long. He could only breathe her name—Yuki! Yuki! My wife! My wife!
Neither tried to explain. There was time enough for that. They were absorbedalone in the fact that they were together at last.
Some one noisily entered the house and whirled up the stairs. It was the American girl. She gazed in upon them with eyes and mouth agape in amazement.
Well, I never! she ejaculated, and went out and down the steps, sobbing aloud.
Such a romance! Such a nice, big fellow, too! And, oh, dear me, Ive lost her sure enough now forever! Bother men, anyhow! and she jumped into Jacks jinrikisha and bade the man take her on the instant to Tokyo.
Meanwhile the lovers had wandered out into the open air. He was holding both her hands in his, and his eyes were straying hungrily over her face; her eyes bewitched him; her lips thrilled him.
THE THOUSAND PETALS OF CHERRY BLOSSOMS WERE FALLING ABOUT THEM
THE THOUSAND PETALS OF CHERRY BLOSSOMS WERE FALLING ABOUT THEM
THE THOUSAND PETALS OF CHERRY BLOSSOMS WERE FALLING ABOUT THEM
The thousand petals of cherry blossoms were falling about them, and thebirds had all flown to their garden and were twittering and bursting their little throats with melody. A fugitive wind came up from the bay and tossed the little scattering curls about her ears and temples. A strand of her hair swept across his hand. He stooped and kissed it reverently, and she laughed and thrilled under the touch of his lips.
I love you with all my soul, he said. Do not laugh at me now.
She said, Dear my lord, I will never laugh more ad you. I laugh only for the joy ad being with you.
I will take you to my home, he said.
I will follow you to the end of the world and beyond, said she.
And we will come back here again, love. We will take up the broken threads of our lives and piece them together.
They shall never again be broken, she said. But he must needs spoilher divine faith. Till death do us part, he added.
No, no. We will have the faith of our simple peasant folk. We are wedded for ever an ever.
Yes, forever, he repeated.
THE END
Transcriber Notes:Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted.In the frontispiece, a closing bracket was added after See p. 8.On page 22, craêpe was replaced with crêpe.On page 122, balony was replaced with balcony.On page 159, the period before and later, was replaced with a comma.On page 160, pursuasion was replaced with persuasion.On page 226, weded was replaced with wedded.
Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs and so that they are next to the text they illustrate.
Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted.
In the frontispiece, a closing bracket was added after See p. 8.
On page 22, craêpe was replaced with crêpe.
On page 122, balony was replaced with balcony.
On page 159, the period before and later, was replaced with a comma.
On page 160, pursuasion was replaced with persuasion.
On page 226, weded was replaced with wedded.