Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 22, January, 1873Various
Science
Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 22, January, 1873
Various
Literature, Modern -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Science -- Periodicals
Such a letter!--filled with the spirit of his love, breathing in every
word the tender, passionate devotion of an earlier day, and yet so sad.
Tears dropped down through her smiles of joy and blurred the lines she
read at first, but smiles and tears alike ceased as she read on. He had
written many, many times, but he knew she had not got his letters. He
had been a prisoner--not only prisoner of war, but afterward prisoner to
a man whose will was iron. It could hardly be explained. This man had
not only saved his life, but he had also rescued him from the horrors of
a Southern prison--would God he had let him die!--and they had been
living together in a ranch in a far off Mexican valley.
Then the letter went on:
"In my heart I am unchanged; my love for you is ever the same; yet I am
no longer the Robert Shirley whom you knew. That has come upon me which
will separate me from you for ever: I cannot ask you now to be my wife.
You are free. It is through no fault of mine. It is my burden, the price
of life, and I must bear it. God bless you and give you all happiness!
"ROBERT SHIRLEY:"
When she had read it all she bowed her head and wept again, and the face
that had grown more and more beautiful with the years of waiting was
radiant. Who can fathom the depths of a woman's love? Who can follow the
subtle workings of a woman's thought? Who can comprehend a woman's
boundless faith? Her course was clear. If misfortune had befallen him,
if he were maimed, disfigured, crazed, even if he were loathsome to her
eyes, she loved him, and she must see him: she would see him and speak
to him, and love him still, even if she could not be his wife. What
would she have done if she could have guessed the truth? As it was, she
wrote upon her card, "If you love me, come to me," and sent it to him.
And in answer to the summons he stood before her--not disfigured, not
maimed, not crazed, not loathsome in any way, yet irrevocably separated
from her for Dr. Fournier's experiment had succeeded, and Robert Shirley
was a mulatto!
CORNELIUS DEWEES.
A VISIT TO THE KING OF AURORA.
(FROM THE GERMAN OF THEODORE KIRSCHOFF.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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