Is there any word you can speak, any deed
you can do, and I not forgive it? Does your wife love you like that--can
you love her as you love me? How cruel destiny is to us! Ah, my beloved
country, I was ready to shed my blood for you--just to win one strong
arm to fight for you, but I did not dream that this would be the
sacrifice required of me. Look, it will soon be time for you to go--we
cannot sleep now, Richard. Sit down here with me, and let us spend
this last hour together with my hand in yours, for we shall never,
never, never meet again."
And so, sitting there hand in hand, we waited for the dawn, speaking
many sad and tender words to one another; and at last, when we parted,
I held her once more unresisting to my breast, thinking, as she did,
that our separation would be an eternal one.
CHAPTER XVIII
About the stirring events of the succeeding days I have little to
relate, and no reader who has suffered the malady of love in its acutest
form will wonder at it. During those days I mixed with a crowd of
adventurers, returned exiles, criminals, and malcontents, every one
of them worth studying; the daylight hours were passed in cavalry
exercises or in long expeditions about the country, while every evening
beside the camp fire romantic tales enough to fill a volume were told
in my hearing. But the image of Dolores was ever before my mind, so
that all this crowded period, lasting nine or ten days, passed before
me like a phantasmagoria, or an uneasy dream, leaving only a very
confused impression on my brain.
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