She comforted herself with the thought that the Wanderer would come to
her, once at least, when she was pleased to send for him. She had that
loyal belief inseparable from true love until violently overthrown by
irrefutable evidence, and which sometimes has such power as to return
even then, overthrowing the evidence of the senses themselves. Are there
not men who trust women, and women who trust men, in spite of the vilest
betrayals? Love is indeed often the inspirer of subjective visions,
creating in the beloved object the qualities it admires and the virtues
it adores, powerless to accept what it is not willing to see, dwelling
in a fortress guarded by intangible, and therefore indestructible,
fiction and proof against the artillery of facts. Unorna's confidence
was, however, not misplaced. The man whose promise she had received had
told the truth when he had said that he had never broken any promise
whatsoever.
In this, at least, there was therefore comfort. On the morrow she would
see him again. The moment of complete despair had passed when she had
received that assurance from his lips, and as she thought of it, sitting
in the absolute stillness of her room, the proportions of the storm
grew less, and possible dimensions of a future hope greater--just as the
seafarer when his ship lies in a flat calm of the oily harbour thinks
half incredulously of the danger past, despises himself for the anxiety
he felt, and vows that on the morrow he will face the waves again,
though the winds blow ever so fiercely.
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