"There are three kinds of darkness, Richard. One like mine, when
the brain has a buzz in the middle, and everything is topsy-turvy.
One, like yours, when the world is all shut out with its beauty
and its flowers; and then there's another, a blacker darkness when
the buzz is in the heart, making it wild with pain. Such, Richard
is the darkness, which lies like a pall around our beautiful
sister Miggie, and it will deepen and deepen unless you do what
Nina asks you to do, and what Miggie never will, because she
promised that she wouldn't-----"
Then followed the entire story of the marriage performed by
Richard, of the grief which followed, of Arthur's gradually
growing love of Edith, of the scene of the Deering Woods, of the
incidents connected with Edith's sickness, her anguish at parting
with Arthur, her love for him still, her struggles to do right,
and her determination to keep her engagement even though she died
in doing it.
All this was told in Nina's own peculiar style; and then came her
closing appeal that Richard himself should break the bonds and set
poor Miggie free.
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