She pressed her face against his shoulder and clasped her arms
firmly round his neck.
"I am not your guardian, Beulah. You refused to make me such. You
are a proud, ambitious woman, solicitous only to secure eminence as
an authoress. I asked your heart; you have now none to give; but
perhaps some day you will love me as devotedly, nay, as madly, as I
have long loved you; for love like mine would wake affection even in
a marble image; but then rolling oceans and trackless deserts will
divide us. And now, good-by. Make yourself a name; bind your aching
brow with the chaplet of fame, and see if ambition can fill your
heart. Good-by, dear child."
Gently he drew her arms from his neck, and took her face in his soft
palms. He looked at her a moment, sadly and earnestly, as if
striving to fix her features in the frame of memory; then bent his
head and pressed a long kiss on her lips. She put out her hands, but
he had gone, and, sinking down on the step, she hid her face in her
arms. A pall seemed suddenly thrown over the future, and the
orphaned heart shrank back from the lonely path where only specters
were visible. Never before had she realized how dear he was to her,
how large a share of her love he possessed, and now the prospect of
a long, perhaps final separation, filled her with a shivering,
horrible dread. We have seen that self-reliance was a powerful
element in her character, and she had learned, from painful
necessity, to depend as little as possible upon the sympathies of
others; but in this hour of anguish a sense of joyless isolation
conquered; her proud soul bowed down beneath the weight of
intolerable grief, and acknowledged itself not wholly independent of
the love and presence of her guardian.
Beulah went back to her desk, and, with tearless eyes, began the
allotted task of writing. The article was due, and must be finished;
was there not a long, dark future in which to mourn? The sketch was
designed to prove that woman's happiness was not necessarily
dependent on marriage. That a single life might be more useful, more
tranquil, more unselfish. Beulah had painted her heroine in glowing
tints, and triumphantly proved her theory correct, while to female
influence she awarded a sphere (exclusive of rostrums and all
political arenas) wide as the universe and high as heaven. Weary
work it all seemed to her now; but she wrote on and on, and finally
the last page was copied and the last punctuation mark affixed. She
wrapped up the manuscript, directed it to the editor, and then the
pen fell from her nerveless fingers and her head went down, with a
wailing cry, on her desk. There the morning sun flashed upon a white
face, tear-stained and full of keen anguish. How her readers would
have marveled at the sight! Ah, "Verily the heart knoweth its own
bitterness."