Below, the
waters were dark and troubled, while from the flat shores rose the
majestic monotony of the forest, chill, shadowy, inscrutable. But
these were as the frame of a picture, that printed itself indelibly
upon the heart of this high-born woman of the world--the picture of a
tropically beautiful face, now for the first time deathly pale, and
seamed with lines of unutterable anguish; of bare rounded arms,
showing in their raised muscles, and in the tense grasp of the oars,
a power of self-repression awful in its strength; of deeply-heaving
bosom, beneath which was raging that old, old conflict between true
and false love--the true love that gives everything, the false love
that grasps everything; of the passionate, eloquent, suffering eyes,
full of jealousy and yearning, fierce hate and fiercer desire, and
behind all, yes, dominating all, the struggle for martyr-like
self-effacement whose cry forever is, not for my sake, but for the
sake of one that I love. Great waves of pity overwhelmed every other
emotion in Helene's breast, as she leaned forward. "My poor child,"
she said, "how intensely you love him! Do not let my coming hurt you
so, I have long ago yielded him to you.
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