She
separated one long, thin lock from the rest, cut it off, and
pinned it carefully, in the form of a circle, on the first blank
page of the album. The moment it was fastened she closed the
volume hurriedly, and placed it in my hands.
"You write to him and he writes to you," she said. "While I am
alive, if he asks after me always tell him I am well, and never
say I am unhappy. Don't distress him, Marian, for my sake, don't
distress him. If I die first, promise you will give him this
little book of his drawings, with my hair in it. There can be no
harm, when I am gone, in telling him that I put it there with my
own hands. And say--oh, Marian, say for me, then, what I can
never say for myself--say I loved him!"
She flung her arms round my neck, and whispered the last words in
my ear with a passionate delight in uttering them which it almost
broke my heart to hear. All the long restraint she had imposed on
herself gave way in that first last outburst of tenderness. She
broke from me with hysterical vehemence, and threw herself on the
sofa in a paroxysm of sobs and tears that shook her from head to
foot.
I tried vainly to soothe her and reason with her--she was past
being soothed, and past being reasoned with.
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