The
convict's shirt, open in large, broad folds, left bare the neck,
delicate as a woman's, and made for that youthful face an aureole, of
innocence, of martyrdom. His looks [149] met hers. Did he recognize
her? She could not have said. She remained there, paralyzed with
emotion, till the moment when the vision disappeared.
Then she flung herself into her chamber, fell on her knees, lost
herself in prayer. There was a distant roll of drums. The man to
whom she had given her maiden soul was gone.
"Cursed be their anger, for it was cruel!" says the reader. But
Monsieur Filon's stories sometimes end as merrily as they begin; and
always he is all delicacy--a delicacy which keeps his large yet
minute antiquarian knowledge of that vanished time ever in service to
a direct interest in humanity as it is permanently, alike before and
after '93. His book is certainly one well worth possessing.
THE END
16th July 1890
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Essays From 'The Guardian'
by Walter Horatio Pater
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