Men must be free, I know--never let me interfere with your
freedom--I feel such a helpless, burdensome creature."
"If you could only see how young and lovely you look even when you
are ill, you would never fear becoming a burden. In spite of your grey
hairs, you might pass for a girl at this minute."
"You wicked flatterer!--but, oh, Jonathan, I've had a blow!"
"I understand. It must have been rough."
"And to think how I always idealized him!--how I had believed in his
love for me and cherished his memory! To discover that even at the
last--on his deathbed--he was thinking of that woman!"
She wept gently, wiping her eyes with a resigned and suffering gesture
on the handkerchief Kesiah had handed her. "I feel as if my whole
universe had crumbled," she said.
"But it was no affront to you, mother--it all happened before he saw
you, and was only an episode. Those things don't bite into a man's life,
you know."
"Of course, I knew there had been something, but I thought he had
forgotten it--that he was faithful to his love for me--his spirit
worship, he called it. Then to find out so long after his death--when
his memory had become a part of my religion--that he had turned back at
the end.
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