"I brought them for you to place upon--upon--"
She hesitated. It sounded like wanton cruelty to say "your mother's
grave" to him, whose idea of everything lovely on earth must be
signified in the word "mother," everything terrible in the word
"grave." But he understood her, and thanked her, while his heart and
eyes filled fast. On that lonely homeward row the burden of his
bereavement lay heavily upon him, and the remembrance of his happy
morning with his childhood's friend, though sweet, was almost as faint
as the fragrance exhaled from the rare exotics at his feet. The pure
tender curves of the white camellias reminded him of Helene. She
herself was the rare product of choicest care and cultivation--the
flower of an old and complex civilization. The fancy pleased him at
first, and then woke in his mind a certain vague disdain. What place
had hot-house plants, either human or otherwise, in this wild new
land, whose illimitable forests as yet were almost strangers to axe
and fire?
In a remote and solitary corner of his own domain, the Commodore had
made for his dead wife a last abiding-place.
Pages:
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67