The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-03-08

over his cyes. He was trembling like :
girl, for the task was very hard.
1T cannot be! r. he said with asob. ssFor
her sake and his must not!'
A boat drifted noiselessly around the
headiand, and Naomi and Godfrey sprang
God in heaven, what does all this
meanw cried Godfrey, dashing up the
beach to seize Hubert BY the throat.
Naomi stood where she was, paralyzed.
and as if in dream.
Mariquita started to her feet She had
read her doom in Hubert's face, now stern
and stiffened rs if carved in stone, and she
knew that the game was lost.
1 was rehearsing an old play with my
former lover, Hubert Gainsborough, !" she
said in hard, harsh voice; 1.-The man who
seduced me when / waslAuguste Delmar's
Years had passed since this bolt fell
rom the blue and shattered the lives of
all concerned. How often the summer
had faded into the autumn and the
autumn had died into winter since then,
and what tragedies had wrought out the
curse to the end. Geofrey's ifeless body
cast up by the tide-how drowned,
whether by accident or design, no one
ever knew. The beautiful woman, by
whom had been wrought all this woe,
dead Of misery and want-stranded like so
much driftwood on the shores Of time and
disease. Naomi and her mother, like dim
specters of their former selves, wandering
listlessly, aimlessly, joylessly through the
the world. Hubert banished like another
Adam from the paradise where he had
lived with Eve and walked with God.
What an. aftermath Of that bitter harvest
Of youthful folly!
But Hubert never asked his heart,
Fought / to have concealed it," Cost
him all it had it was better than life of
deception, the whitewashing of infamy,
and the contamination of Naomi and
Godfrey by the wife of Auguste Delmar,
stOckbroker.
Long parted, they met one winter moon
light night in the Coliseum at Rome.
This place Of death and ruin, filled with
the memories of love and Joy and glory
and martyrdom, all buried deep in the
past, was the lifting place for them to
for day, winter for summer. When they
met 1t was almost as if they too were
ghosts with the rest; but that momentary
hesitation of each passed like cloud and
their hands claSped, one the other. too
frankly for even the pretense of doubt.
Shall we never bury our dead, Naomi %
ne asked. "Wili yon never forgive me?'
Not while she lives. She stands be-
tween u.s." Naomi said, but she spoke
family and as if with reluctance.
She is dead, he answered. "Only the
ghost of the past divides us. Is that as
strong as the living present 2"
Can ever trust or believe you again ?''
she asked, sadly.
IF the anguish of ali these years gives
assurance-yes,n he returned
She turned away her head. She did not
wish the moonlight to shine on the tears
that came into her eyes. He took her
hands and drew them up to his breast,
and she did not resist. Then suddenly,
with her old air of self-surrender, she
turned to him and looked at him with the
same eyes of love as used to look at him in
the summer time SO long ago.
II have always loved you the best" she
said, softly, "and have never ceased to
pray for you. Perhaps God has heard and
has given us back to each other as an
answer to my prayer for pardon for my
self az we'll as for you. For was too
hard? Perhaps!''