Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/19

 tempting scenes and people. Guilty, or not guilty, forget and forgive. Voluntarily free this simpleton from the chafing thrall that binds her to one whose purse, not person, is all on earth she cares for. Let her go at the call of affection, and, forsaking you and duty, yield her to the better and nobler law of love. Free her, and they twain will likely wed. Hold her, and she is that nameless thing—a wedded harlot.

My soul had, still as my friend, not myself, gotten thus far in its just reasonings when methought I heard a sweet and silvery voice say, "Behold!" And as the delicious tones rung glorified changes through my spirit I felt that I had grown a century within an hour; and notwithstanding that I actually believed my friend's wife to be guilty, and might probably so believe until my dying day, yet I had charity for her, as well as sorrow and sympathy for him. I put myself in his place, and for the first time in my life not only realized the luxury of forgiveness, but felt capable of even dying a lingering death that the woman so loved might be happy with him she so loved; and greater affection than that can no man show, in that he would lay down his life for a friend. I talked with the husband; persuaded him to lay by the pistols and revenge. He did so, and ceased to be jealous from that hour, caring but little whether the vision was of actual fact or a delirious dream.

"Behold!" I looked, still with that ultra soul-sight which leaps all boundaries, cleaves all space, flashes over rivers, mountains, seas, penetrates all bodies, and brings us in actual contact with the whole domain of mystery; and again I saw the little German child, through the walls of both houses, as clearly as if they were of finest crystal or purest glass instead of boards and mortar. And I beheld an ineffably pure, pearly-hued effulgence playing about her little head, undulating in billowy movement all about her infantile shoulders, streaming from her hair, glowing round her waist, and in loving wavelets all around. I watched this with astonishment. It was but the prelude to the celestial cantata that followed. I saw her mother gently chide her, and soon she went to bed, and slept the sweet, delicious slumber of absolute innocence; and as she thus lay I saw the gossamic cloud of pearly aura expand till it filled the room,