Good-bye--my precious
Diana--your dying--and very weary
"MOTHER."
The words sank into Diana's young heart. They dulled the smart of her
crushed love; they awakened a sense of those forces ineffable and
majestic, terrible and yet "to be entreated," which hold and stamp the
human life. Oliver had forsaken her. His kiss was still on her lips. Yet
he had forsaken her. She must stand alone. Only--in the spirit--she put
out clinging hands; she drew her mother to her breast; she smiled into
her father's eyes. One with them; and so one with all who suffer! She
offered her life to those great Forces; to the hidden Will. And thus,
after three days of torture, agony passed into a trance of ecstasy--of
aspiration.
* * * * *
But these were the exaltations of night and silence. With the returning
day, Diana was again the mere girl, struggling with misery and nervous
shock. In the middle of the morning arrived a special messenger with a
letter from Marsham. It contained arguments and protestations which in
the living mouth might have had some power. That the living mouth was
not there to make them was a fact more eloquent than any letter.
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