have become any dearer to her than any other chance-met acquaintance of the hour? He could not upbraid her with having smiled on him one hour to forsake him as a stranger the next, for with the outset she had bade him leave her unknown.
Hot tears, the first that had ever come there since as a child he had sobbed over his young mother's grave, rushed into his eyes, shutting out the stretch of the sparkling seas and the rich colouring around him, where Cashmere roses and Turkish lilies bloomed in untrained luxuriance. The sea had no freedom, the flowers no fragrance, the green earth in its early summer no beauty for him;—he only felt that let him spend loyalty, fidelity, life and peace upon her as he would, he might never be one shadow nearer to her than he was now, he might never touch her to one breath of tenderness, never move her to one pang of pity. His strength was great, he had wrestled with the gaunt northern bear in the cold of a Scandinavian night, he had fought with ocean and storm in the madness of a tropical tempest, he had closed with the African lion in a fierce embrace, and wrenched the huge jaws apart as they closed on their prey; he had prevailed in these things by fearless force, by human might: but
