Page:The Wreck of a World - Grove - 1890.djvu/133

Rh citizens, her fingers lightly resting on the arm of the handsomest man left in the world, whose face transfigured with pride love and victory seemed like the face of a triumphant Archangel.

Some meetings are too sacred for and transcend all description, and what thoughts and words passed between Aurelia and myself I neither can nor will recount. To one spectator at least the sight was fraught with pain rather than pleasure. Poor Gell, who with his wonted goodness instead of gazing on the fight had been removing a sick woman from the conflagration of her home and extinguishing the flames, came down towards the quay, black and begrimed, just in time to see Aurelia walking up the street on the arm of his victorious rival. Too true a lover to be blind to love's signs, he saw the love-light beaming from the face of young Dana, and the happy radiance (as it seemed to him) of love returned from the face of his compaaioncompanion [sic]. Not all the joy of his dream fulfilled, not the rapture of his recovery of his long-lost love, could overcome the terrible sense that she had returned, but not for him. He turned aside feeling deadly sick, struggled with his weakness for a few