Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/293

 refuge, he looks his last in this world on her from whom in his great loyalty of affection neither her past disgrace nor his own approaching death shall part him for ever. With that instinct of pure love which clings to a belief in its eternity, he charges her to cleanse her soul with repentance and sustain her hopes with faith, that

Thus, with all his soul flowing to his lips, this grand heroic nature blesses the guilty woman, grovelling in the dust, and moves off stately and unflinching to confront the doom of Fate.

Then, true to the yearning nature of her sex, yearning ever with keenest longings for the lost and the impossible, Guinevere leaps to her feet, the tide of a new love welling up in her wayward heart, fierce, cruel, and