look that, defiant as it was, spoke of a terrible love before which all our warnings and entreaties were but as empty air.
“ ‘Curses then upon your head, slayer of a family’s honor, a father’s love, and a mother’s memory! Curses upon you, at home and abroad! in the joy of your first passion and in the agony of your last despair! May you live to look upon that door as the gateway to heaven, and find it shut! May your children, if you are cursed with them, turn in your face, as you are turning now in mine! May the lightning of heaven be your candle, and the blackness of death your daily food and your nightly drink!’ And with a look in which all the terrors he invoked, seemed to crash downward from his reeling brain upon her shrinking terror-crouched head, he gave one mighty gasp and fell back stricken to the floor.
“ ‘God!’ burst from her lips, and she rushed downwards to the door like a creature hunted to its quarry. I saw her white face gleam marble-like in the fading light that came in from the chinks about the door. I saw her trembling hand fumbling with the knob, and rousing from my stupor, called down to her with all the force of a breaking heart,
“ ‘Jacqueline, beware!’
“She turned once more. There was something in my voice she could not withstand. ‘I do not hope to keep you,’ cried I, ‘but before you go, hear this. In the days to come, when the face that now beams upon you with such longing, shall have learned to turn from you in weariness, if not distaste, when hunger, cold, contumely and disease shall have blasted that fair brow and seared those soft cheeks, know, that although a father can curse, a woman who loves like a mother can forgive.’ The father cries, ‘Once go out of that door and it shuts upon you never to open!’ ‘Once come to that door, say I,’ pointing in the direction of the house’s other entrance, ‘and if I live and if I move, it shall open to you, were you as