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The Shadow of a Sin
The Shadow of a Sin
CHAPTER I
"She is coming – my own, my sweet;
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat
Had it lain for a century dead."
A rich musical voice trolled out the words, not once, but many times over – carelessly at first, and then the full sense of them seemed to strike the singer.
"'Had it lain for a century dead,'" he repeated slowly. "Ah, me! the difference between poetry and fact – when I have lain for a century dead, the light footfalls of a fair woman will not awaken me. 'Beyond the sun, woman's beauty and woman's love are of small account;' yet here – ah, when will she come?"
The singer, who was growing impatient, was an exceedingly handsome young man – of not more than twenty – with a face that challenged all criticism – bright, careless, defiant, full of humor, yet with a gleam of poetry – a face that girls and women judge instantly, and always like. He did not look capable of wrong, this young lover, who sung his love-song so cheerily, neither did he look capable of wicked thoughts.
"'You really must come, for I said
I would show the bright flowers their queen.'
That is the way to talk to women," he soliloquized, as the words of the song dropped from his lips. "They can not resist a little flattery judiciously mixed with poetry. I hope I have made no mistake. Cynthy certainly said by the brook in the wood. Here is the brook – but where is my love?"
He grew tired of walking and singing – the evening was warm – and he sat down on the bank where the wild thyme and heather grew, to wait for the young girl who had promised to meet him when the heat of the day had passed.
He had been singing sweet love-songs; the richest poetry man's hand ever penned or heart imagined had been falling in wild snatches from his lips. Did this great poem of nature touch him – the grand song that echoes through all creation, which began in the faint, gray chaos, when the sea was bounded and the dry land made, and which will go on until it ends in the full harmony of heaven?
He looked very handsome and young and eager; his hair was tinged with gold, his mouth was frank and red; yet he was not quite trustworthy. There was no great depth in his heart or soul, no great chivalry, no grand treasure of manly truth, no touch of heroism.
He took his watch from his pocket and looked at it. "Ten minutes past seven – and she promised to be here at six. I shall not wait much longer."
He spoke the words aloud, and a breath of wind seemed to move the trees to respond; it was as though they said, "He is no true knight to say that."