She and I, Volume 2: A Love Story. A Life History.Hutcheson, John C. (John Conroy)
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She and I, Volume 2: A Love Story. A Life History.
Hutcheson, John C. (John Conroy)
Love stories
I knew that I--my other self--wished to reach the heights of the
Matterhorn before and above me: the region of perpetual snow. I
sympathised with that wish; and yet, I could look on at all my efforts
to accomplish it, as if I were uninterested in their success, whilst I
still felt, within myself, all the agony and suspense that must have
filled the mind of my wraith, I could see myself making repeated
exertions to reach the heights; constantly climbing, never getting any
higher. I appeared to patrol a narrow circle, whose circumference I was
unable to cross. Round and round I went, continually striving to get
upwards and onwards:--still, always finding myself in the same identical
spot, as if I had not advanced an inch. I grew tired, weary, exhausted.
I felt sick at heart and in body. A nameless, indefinable horror
seized upon me.
Then, all of a sudden, Min appeared.
She stood on the peaks above me; her figure presented in strong relief
against the dead, neutral tint of the ice-wall behind her. I could see
her face plainly--the look of entreaty in her eyes and the beckoning
motion of her hands. She was calling to me, and urging me to join her;
and--I _could_ not!
A wide crevasse yawned before me, preventing any forward movement. It
yawned deep down in front of my feet, fathoms below fathoms, piercing
down, seemingly, to the centre of the earth. Looking over its edge I
could mark how the vaulted arc of heaven and the starry firmament were
reflected in its bottomless abyss; while, its breadth, seemed
immeasurable. I saw that I could not cross it by the path I had
hitherto pursued; and yet, whenever I turned aside, and tried to reach
the mountain top by some other way, the horrible crevasse curved its
course likewise, still confronting me. It was always before me, to
arrest my progress. I could not evade it, I could not overleap it; and
yet, there stood Min calling to me, and beckoning to me--and, I could
not join her. It was maddening!
The moonlight faded. The twinkling stars went in one by one. There was
a subdued darkness for a moment; and then, day appeared to break.
The snowy expanse appeared to blush all over--
"And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made himself an awful rose of dawn."
Did you ever watch an Alpine sunrise? How the light leaps from peak to
peak, warming the monotonous white landscape in an instant with a tinge
of crimson lake, and making the ice prisms sparkle like sapphires!
It was just so in my dream:--not a detail was omitted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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