Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/328

 tell. His fine nervous constitution was tasked to its fullest capacity; and now the reserve force—that last fund of human endurance—was coming into play. He had grown thinner and paler, and his eyes looked larger and more unfathomably deep than ever. Those blue-gray eyes, which had burned with so tender a light of love for Margaret Ruysdale, now seemed gifted with a power of seeing beyond the vision of other men, and tender with a love surpassing that of a lover for his mistress.

Therese had grown stronger and better, in spite of the hard labor which was so new to her. The cankering bitterness which had eaten her heart was all gone now; in the awful reality in which she lived, things before and behind her shone out in their true colors. She saw and repented her own sin, and was glad of the expiation in which she believed she was atoning for her past. Her greatest anxiety was centred in Philip, whom she watched and guarded with a jealous care, sparing his strength and foreseeing his every wish, in her desire to save him all unnecessary fatigue. She had grown wonderfully gentle and tender, the poor half-crazed Therese, and Hero himself was not more humble and faithful in ministering to his master than was she. She had never greatly feared the fever for herself; it was for Philip that she grew more