The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1879-12-03

look calmly at the old sorrow and compre-
bend that it were best; to feel that she had
| grown stronger and purer, and that it is but
a moral degradation for woman to love
| what is unworthy of her love. She thought
| of the words:
She look down her lover; her love. like her
He must stand by her side or above her. who would
kindle its hottest fires
For two years she had trusted Ralph Eve
leth; she had hoped against hope; she had
believed in him and suffered by him
as only a loving woman can suffer
Unasked her heart made all tn ex-
cuses for him. She placed him always
in the mental perspective of good light
She was patient and tender. and at last when
the bitter knowledge was forced upon her
that it was all in vain, that the man she loved
had no existence save in her own idealization
of him. she had felt that life, in its best sense,
was over for her; she was not much given to
the consolation of poetry or philosophy, but
in all those dark, despairing days a line of
Mrs. Brownings haunted her:
And having missed some personal hope,
Beware that thus miss no reasonable duty.
In work and in living in other lives Miss
Kelsey strove to forget the past-no, not to
forget-but to overlap it with earnest, gen.
| uine living. She would not be warped or
narrowed by suffering-God had made her
too noble for that.
Of the silent intensity of the love
Ray Converse had for her she had never
fully realized. Absorbed in her thoughts of
another she failed to comprehend all he had
endured, when he felt that for her happiness
he must leave her. Afterward she had cause
to know how tender and steadfast was his
love, and sometimes it rested her to remem-
Der it. She thought how happy must the wo-
man be whom his love embodied, for that he
had married she never questioned.
Now she knew that the highest love of her
life had never been given to Ralph; that he
had not the power to call it from her.
These eight years of her life in st. Este
venue had been years of earnest work
in her art. Two days in each
week she received her pupils in paint
ing; others she worked in her studio. This
last year the silent intensity of her nature
had found expression in book which had
met success that surpassed her highest ex-
pectatons. This book was the inevitable out
growth of all she had lived through, for to
the artistic nature expression is necessity.
Nothing could have more conclusively proved
how she had outgrown her love for Mr..
Eveleth than her power to write this book,
with its rare analytical Characterization. All
that had died in her heart lived on in her
brain with added force.
Miss Kelsey wondered why life looked
dreary this evening. She had become quite
the center of charming circle of people, all
of exceptional gifts and culture, and both
artists and authors sought her continually
The innate joyousness and elasticity Of her
| nature shone through the earnestness of real
| rank like light through alabaster. The
woman was still as fresh and simple as the
| child. The years of discipline had perfected
| her character into rare loneliness, and her
| manner had nameless magnetism, felt by
| all. One could not know Miss Kelsey with
out giving her the poets tribute;
| All hearts grew warner in her presence,
As who seeking not her own,
Gave freely for the love of giving,
Nor reaped for self the harvest sown.
| But to night life looked dreary to Gene
We've, and she family wondered what she
should do all the long, lonely winter so neal
at hand thinking with despairing thrill of
pain that life had grown colorless, and she
| could not endure it any longer. To this
there succeeded state of repressed excite
ment. The rose-hush deepened in her cheeks,
and there was new sparkle in her eyes.
| She felt the presence of unknown happi-
ness
There came ring at the door, and voice
| in the hall But she sat quite still on the low
seat in the south window, where the faint
odor of the ferns breathed al subtle fragrance.
| The footsteps came nearer. There was
knock at the door.
Miss Kelsey could not herself have told
what followed. She only realized half an
hour later that Ray Converse was beside her;
and his arms embodied her, and that his eyes
were bent low upon the pure, patient beauty
| that sorrow had chiseled in her face There
was more than the girlish loveliness
of feature and color. The girls eagerness
| had not faded, but the woman's power was
| there-the woman's longing and earnestness
for Ray had told her what his coming
meant. He held her in his arms, and kissed
again and again the tender, clinging lips
| the flushing, paling face; and he told her the
story of his years of love in words of pas
sionate intensity He told her how, when
| all was dark, the thought Of her was still the
| inspiration to live not unworthily of her,
and now that his need of her must be met,
and they would go out together into the Joy
and fullness of new life that should be a
perpetual Thanksgiving. And Genevieve
| listened to the words that thrilled every chord
of her being; listened as only woman who
| has suffered and triumphed and loved can
| listen to the words that first satisfy her heart
| Raw loved her; what more could she ask?
"And now my darling" he said-"my
own patient, loving little girl-you will
promise to be mine tomorrow. / can not
part with you again, dear. Life is too short
to lose one hour of its happiness. Let to-
morrow be, indeed, the Thanksgiving Of our
lives"
"rhere was quiet, beautiful bridal the
next day. No one knew just how it came
about, but all the circle of friends who had
held Genevieve so dear grouped in the pretty
studio where she had wrought out many
lovely fancies and there were flowers and
music and tender kisses after the sacred rites
| were said, and the light of an ineffable peace
was on the face of the lovely bride, and per-
haps there were never purer prayers than
those that followed Genevieve Con-