And then as he reeled forward, the blood spurting from the
long gash in his arm, all grew black before him and he knew no more.
CHAPTER XIX
IN WHICH AN UNLOOKED-FOR EVENT TAKES PLACE
That great and desolating change which had swept over France in the two
years and more of Calvert's absence was reflected in every heart, in
every life left in that wrecked land. On the most insensible, the most
frivolous, the most indifferent alike fell the shadow of those terrible
times. The sadness and the horror fell on Adrienne de St. Andre as it
fell on so many others, but besides the terror of those days she had to
bear a still heavier sorrow. There is no pang which the heart can suffer
like the realization, too late, that we have lost what we most prize;
that we have missed some great opportunity for happiness which can never
come to us again; that we have rejected and passed by what we would now
sell our souls to possess. This conviction, slowly borne in upon
Adrienne, caused her more anguish than she had supposed, in her
ignorance, anything in the world could make her feel. The man whose name
she bore was scarcely a memory to her.
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