Page:Female Prose Writers of America.djvu/211

 “I must leave thee, Mary; for I feel assured that my pilgrimage is near its close.”

Mary could only weep.

“There is much that I would tell thee, Mary; but I know not whether thou art able to bear it,” the youth at length said.

“Shall we meet again?” faltered the child in a low voice. His face contracted with a sharp pang, and he murmured, “Oh, my God! deliver thou me.”

“Mary, I am in deadly peril; I beseech thee question me not,” he replied.

Mary looked into his eyes, so full of their clear unearthly light; so full of all that makes a human heart a well-spring of ineffable blessedness, and overcome with the flood of girlish sympathy, she cast her arms about his neck, and murmured, “Do not leave me.”

Poor child! the youth arose sternly from the ground, and placing one foot upon the shoulder of the beast he had just slain, turned his back to the girl, who shrank to the earth, and buried her face in the masses of curls that clustered about her neck. At length, the sobs of the child touched even his stern heart, and he turned himself around: but oh! the grief and agony on his face had done in minutes the work of years&mdash;he who a moment before had been fair and smooth as the boy of eighteen summers, was now rigid, stern, and marked by those outlines of thought, which come only when the soul has wrestled with some mighty grief, even like unto that of the Patriarch of old, when he wrestled all night with the Angel of God.

“Mary,” he said, sinking on his knees beside the girl, “I must tell thee all, and then if thou dost weep, and lament, the judgment of the Eternal will be completed in me.”

Mary lifted her head&mdash;“Thou wilt go&mdash;shall we not meet again?”

The youth groaned heavily.

Mary’s pure nature taught her that she was giving pain, and casting her selfishness aside, she said:

“Wilt thou pardon my folly? forget me, unless thou canst also forget this unmaidenly scene.”

The youth buried his face in his hands, and through the fingers