So perished the life that was naught but a mere empty husk, since
love, its strong sweet occupant, had departed. Alas, poor Wanda! alas,
poor little one, whose sore feet and sorer heart could find no
resting-place in all this wide hard world. The anguished winds moaned
on far into the night; the sad waves, now racked and scourged by the
tempest, sobbed ceaselessly upon the beach; the pitiful heavens
outpoured their flood of tears, but the tortured soul that had
committed the god-like sin of loving too much had found rest at last.
CHAPTER XXII.
LOVE'S REWARDS.
A few days afterwards the body of the Algonquin maiden, recovered from
the waves, was lying in an upper chamber at Pine Towers. Whatever may
have been the supreme agony in which this suffering soul parted from
its human habitation, no trace of it remained upon the inanimate form.
Free from scar or stain it lay, the languid limbs forever motionless,
the cold hands crossed upon a pulseless breast, the beautiful figure,
heavily shadowed in enshrouding tresses, stretched in painless repose,
and on the wonderful face the expression of one who has gained, not
rest and peace--when had she ever hungered for these?--but the look,
almost startling in its intensity, of one who has found love.
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