"Why I would perhaps marry the son, just to correct your fallacious idea
about the father, that is all! This course is shut out from you,
however, entirely, by your own folly, so _you_ must take what you can
get now, for Claude Bainrothe, let me assure you, is lost to you
forever." And she went out, smiling triumphantly.
I suspected from that hour what I knew later, and I had suffered the
last pang to agonize my heart that my broken troth should ever cost me.
The corpse of my dead love had bled at the touch of its murderer, in
accordance with ancient superstition. Now, calm and quiet oblivion and
the sepulchre should surround and enshroud it forever more.
I think I kept my determination bravely from that hour, but others must
judge of this for me. We are not gods, to say to the tide of feeling,
"Thus far, and no farther shalt thou come." We are only mortal Canutes
at best, to lift back our chairs as the tide advances, and seat
ourselves securely thereon beyond the surf. We all remember how it fared
with the quaint old monarch and moralist when he tried the plan of the
immortals, and commanded the sea to obey him--we perish if we arrogate
too much when the surges sweep around us; but we can, we must avoid them
if we hope to escape their force, and plant ourselves beyond them firmly
on the shore.
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