"Yes, thank God; for when I thought that you had forgotten me----" "Then you _did_ think so?" "For a time; and it seemed to me as if no more constancy were left on earth; as if it had been sapped and undermined in its very citadel." "Do not believe that I forgot you for a single hour; or that I can ever forget you. You and I have been joined at least in an equal sorrow and suspense. We have walked through depths together, and drank the same gall and bitterness." "That one month--four miserable weeks--should have worked all this! One month sooner, and this black picture of our lives would have been bright again as the sunshine. I could believe that some infernal power had taken the reins of our fate." "Do not say so, nor think so. You have fronted death; you have braved despair; and now bear this blow victoriously as you have borne the rest." "The crowning blow is the heaviest of all." "Look into my heart,--if you could look into it,--and see on which of us it has fallen with the more sickening and withering force." Morton looked into her face. It was like a deep lake becalmed, into which strong springs are boiling up from rocks at the bottom. The surface is still; but looking more closely, one may discern faint gliding undulations and trembling lines, which betray the turmoil below. Morton saw them, and felt their purport. "I would to God," he said, "I could bear your burden for you." Edith buried her face, and burst into a flood of weeping. Grief, mixed with more ardent emotion, wrought with such violence in Morton's breast, that he scarcely restrained his impulse to throw himself at her feet. In a few moments, she raised her head. "Do not think from this, that I am not resigned to what has fallen on us. It is best. Incomprehensible as it is, it is best for us both." A passionate denial rose to Morton's lips; but he did not utter it. "I overrated my strength. I am weaker than I hoped to have found myself. You wish to bear my burden! You have had enough to bear of your own, Vassall; but with you, endurance is not the whole. You still have youth, health, vigor. To one of your instincts, the world has noble tasks enough. With a heart steeled by dangers, refined by sufferings, tempered in fires of anguish, what path need you fear to tread? Forget the past;--no, do not forget it; only forget all in it that may damp your courage or weaken your hand. When I knew you first, you were full of zeal in a worthy and generous enterprise. Cling to it still. Let me see the tree which I knew in its blossoming bear a full fruit at maturity. Let me see the ardent and earnest spirit which I knew in the beginning, not quelled or flagging by the way, but holding on its course to the end. The pure chivalry of your heart which constrained me to love you, the instinct which turned towards honor and nobleness as a tree turns its branches to the sun,--do not part from it; keep it unstained for my sake, and let it brighten and strengthen all your life."