The owls were calling in the trees
behind him--some in faint prolonged cry, one in a sharp shrieking note.
And at whiles a train rushed upon the ear, held it, and died away; or a
breeze crept among the dead beech leaves at his feet. Otherwise not a
sound or show of life; Marsham was alone with night and himself.
Twenty-four hours--little more--since on that same hill-side he had held
Diana in his arms in the first rapture of love. What was it that had
changed? How was it--for he was frank with himself--that the love which
had been then the top and completion of his life, the angel of all
good-fortune within and without, had become now, to some extent, a
burden to be borne, an obligation to be met?
Certainly, he loved her well. But she came to him now, bringing as her
marriage portion, not easy joy and success, the full years of prosperity
and ambition, but poverty, effort, a certain measure of disgrace, and
the perpetual presence of a ghastly and heart-breaking memory. He shrank
from this last in a positive and sharp impatience. Why should Juliet
Sparling's crime affect him?--depress the vigor and cheerfulness of
his life?
As to the effort before him, he felt toward it as a man of weak
unpractised muscle who endeavors with straining to raise a physical
weight.
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