Page:Romance & Reality 1.pdf/123

Rh were to come, since love had no longer strength to bear him through them. If there be one part of life on which the curse spoken at Eden rests in double darkness—if there be one part of life on which is heaped the gathered wretchedness of years, it is the time when guilty love has burnt itself out, and the heart sees crowd around those vain regrets, that deep remorse, whose voices are never heard but in the silence of indifference. Who ever repented or regretted during the reign of that sweet madness when one beloved object was more, ay a thousand times more, than the world forgotten for its sake? But when the silver cord of affection is loosened, and the golden bowl of intoxicating passion broken—when that change which passes over all earth's loveliest has passed, too, over the heart—when that step which was once our sweetest music falls on the ear a fear, not a hope—when we know that we love no more as once we loved—when memory broods on the past, which yields but a terrible repentance, and hope turns sickening from a future, which is her grave—if there be a part of life where misery and weariness contend together till the agony is greater than we can bear, this is the time.