"
"But he has not yielded himself to me," moaned the girl, her ashen
lips framing the cry that came from her soul. The boat grated in the
sand, and she sprang out, and pulled it upon the beach. Then, taking
in a feverish clasp the delicately-draped arm of the other, she
hurried her to the spot where Edward still lay, deadly pale but
conscious. He did not look at Wanda--he had no eyes save for Helene.
With a little cry of passionate love and sorrow she flung herself
beside him, and drew the white wounded face close to her aching heart.
His broken syllables of love were in her ears, his head was nestled,
like that of a weary child, within her arms, his blood was staining
the white laces on her breast. For a moment Wanda paused and looked
upon them; then noiselessly as a dream she vanished away.
But where in the wide, pitiless world is there a place of refuge for a
woman's broken heart? Instinctively Wanda went back to the boat, and
rowed far out upon the troubled waters. The afternoon's storm had been
but the warning of a wilder one yet to come; the heavy skies shut down
on all sides, adamantine and inexorable as the fate enshrouding her;
from the mute mysterious woods came the sighing of the wind, sinking
now into deep moaning, then rising into a shrill anguish, that was
answered by the sobbing of the waves upon the beach.
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