And they would be always
there now, she thought.
At last she spoke.
"Then love, since you are mine, and I am yours, wake from the dream to
life itself--wake, not knowing that you have slept, knowing only that
you love me now and always--wake, love wake!"
She waved her delicate hand before his eyes and still resting the other
upon his shoulder, watched the returning brightness in the dark pupils
that had been glazed and fixed a moment before. And as she looked, her
own beauty grew radiant in the splendour of a joy even greater than she
had dreamed of. As it had seemed to him when he had lost himself in her
gaze, so now she also fancied that the grim, gray wilderness was full of
a soft rosy light. The place of the dead was become the place of life;
the great solitude was peopled as the whole world could never be for
her; the crumbling gravestones were turned to polished pillars in the
temple of an immortal love, and the ghostly, leafless trees blossomed
with the undying flowers of the earthly paradise.
One moment only, and then all was gone. The change came, sure, swift and
cruel. As she looked, it came, gradual, in that it passed through every
degree, but sudden also, as the fall of a fair and mighty building,
which being undermined in its foundations passes in one short minute
through the change from perfect completeness to hopeless and utter ruin.
All the radiance, all the light, all the glory were gone in an instant.
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