She looked up into his face, her eyes heavy with unshed tears. The love in her heart triumphed over every preconceived resolve, over every cruel, agonizing memory, as great love always must. Yet there are triumphs sadder than any defeat: there are joys more painful than any woe. It was such a triumph, and such a joy, that filled Helena's heart as she glided into her lover's embrace. "Oh, yes, I can forgive it all," she sighed. "Because I love you and because I am a _woman_. I sometimes think, Percy, that God must be a woman. He is expected to forgive so much." Into her great heart, as she nestled upon his breast, in this supreme hour of reconciliation and recompense, there shot a keen, agonizing memory of the woman she had displaced; of the woman who had wrecked her whole happiness and lost her life in an unwise love for this man, whose tender, passionate words were falling now upon willing ears. It was a memory which must, to a nature as generous and unselfish as hers, cast a melancholy shadow over the most intense hour of happiness the future could hold for her. It was a phantom shape, which must sit forever at her feasts of love. Percy had made to her a complete surrender of his very soul; and she knew that their doubly wedded spirits, like two united streams, would mix and flow on together to the ocean of Eternity. Yet the more perfect her own joy, the deeper into her sympathetic heart must sink the sorrowful memories of Dolores. Always, as she looked up to him with the worshiping eyes of a loyal wife, and saw in him her hero, her ideal, her protector and her guide, she must remember the young life his thoughtless, selfish folly helped to lay in ruins. All these emotions, robed the joy of that nuptial hour in mourning, as she lifted her sweet, sad face and filmy eyes to his. And Percy, folding her in his arms, felt all a man's selfish pride, and all a lover's keen rapture in the knowledge that he was pressing the first kiss upon her pure lips, which had ever been placed there since her father's dying benediction fell upon them. THE END. * * * * * Transcriber's Note: Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. Many words in the text occur in both hyphenated and non-hyphenated form (e.g. room-mate/roommate): this is authentic to the original text. Obsolete, variant or eccentric spelling has been retained. However, for consistency, the names 'Volkenburg', 'Lorette', and 'Shelley' have been changed when, in a few instances, they were spelled 'Volkenberg', 'Lorrete', and 'Shelly'. Inconsistent quotation marks in the correspondence have been kept as printed. Punctuation has been standardised, and typographical errors have been silently changed. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mal Moulée, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox