The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 7, May, 1858 by Various
page 31 of 278 (11%)
page 31 of 278 (11%)
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long for his enlightening.
The most painful result of all to Violet was the new coldness of Roger's manner to her. Shadowed as he was, he did not perceive this change in himself; but Violet, in the silence of night, or in the solitary hours she spent in wood and field beside her growing Shadow, felt it with unmingled pain. Vainly did the Spirit of Light within her counsel her to persevere, looking only at the end she would achieve; subtler and more penetrative to her untuned ear were the words of the fiend at her side. One day she had brooded long and drearily on the carelessness and coldness of her dear, her disregardful friend, and in her worn and weary soul revolved whatever sweetness of the past had now fled, and what pangs of love repulsed and devotion scorned lay before her in the miserable future; and as she held her throbbing head upon her hands, wasted with fiery pulses, it seemed to her as if the Shadow, inclining to her ear, whispered, almost audibly,-- "Think what you have given this man!--your hope and peace; the breath of your life and the beatings of your heart. All your soul is lavished on him, and see how he repays you!" The weak and disheartened girl shivered; the time was past when she could have despised the voice of this dread companion, when the Shadow dared not have spoken thus; and with bitter tears swelling into her eyes she and the Shadow walked forth together to a haunt on the mountain-side where she had been used to meet Roger. It was a bare rock, just below the summit of a peak crowned with a few old cedars, from whose laborious growth of dull, dark foliage long |
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