Access Online - The European Library

ARIADNE. 105now become equally absorbed into the memoryof her love, and a more absolute isolation still.After that night beside the hearth-fire, she nevernamed him. Only once, when, in my loathingof his heartlessness,Ilet escape me words toofurious against him, she stopped me as thoughIuttered blasphemy.The great fidelity of hers never waned orwavered. He had forsaken her: she could notsee that this could make any change in herownfealty.no other reason.She lived because he lived,and forHer life indeed was aliving death.When one is young still, and has by naturepure health and strength, actual death does notcome as easily as poets picture it. But becausethe body ails little, and the limbs move withouteffort, and the pulses beat with regularity, nonethe less doesa living death fall on the sensesand the soul; and the clays and the years are along blank waste that no effort canrecall or distinguish,and all the sweet glad sights andsounds of the earth are mere pain, as they areto the dying.