At these times the vision of
Sylvia standing in the midst of the still-smoking ruins of the
buildings, which had been, in spite of their wretched condition, dear to
him because they were almost all he had in the world, seemed to rise
before him with horrible reality: Sylvia, dressed in her black, black
clothes, with her soft dark hair, and her deep-blue eyes, and her vivid
red lips which so seldom either drooped or smiled but lay tightly closed
together, a crimson line in her white face, which was no more sorrowful
than it was mask-like. The expression was as pure and as sad and as
gentle as that of a Mater Dolorosa he had chanced to see in a collection
of prints at the Wallacetown Library, and yet--and yet--Austin knew
instinctively that the dead husband, whoever he might have been, and his
own brother Thomas were not the only men besides himself who had found it
irresistibly alluring.
"I'm poorer than ever now," he groaned to himself, "and ignorant, and
mean, and dirty, and a beast in every sense of the word; I can't ever
atone for the way I've treated her--for the way I've--but if I could only
find her and _try_, oh, I've got to! Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia--"
The rain struck about by the wind, which had risen again, lashed against
the leaves of the trees, and the wet, swaying boughs struck against his
face as he started on again; but the storm and his own footsteps were the
only sounds he could hear.
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