She wrote to Thelma asking her pardon, and in return received
such a sweet, forgiving, generous letter as caused her to weep for an
hour or more. But she felt she could never again meet the clear regard
of those beautiful, earnest, truthful eyes--never again could she stand
in Thelma's presence, or call her friend--that was all over. Still Love
remained,--a Love, chastened and sad, with drooping wings and a somewhat
doubting smile,--yet it was Love--
"Love, that keeps all the choir of lives in chime--
Love, that is blood--within the veins of time."
And Love, no matter how abused and maltreated, is a very patient god,
and even while suffering from undeserved wounds, still works on, doing
magical things. So that poor Edward Neville, the forsaken husband of
Violet Vere, when he heard that that popular actress had died suddenly
in America from a fit of delirium tremens brought on by excessive
drinking, was able, by some gentle method known only to Love and
himself, to forget all her frailties--to obliterate from his memory the
fact that he ever saw her on the boards of the Brilliant Theatre,--and
to think of her henceforth only as the wife he had once adored, and who,
he decided in vague, dreamy fashion, must have died young.
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