He bent low to pick it up, the blood surging in his veins--and when he
raised himself, holding it in his hand, she was moving onward through
the crowd which closed behind to gaze and comment on her--and his
kinsman Dunstanwolde came forward from an antechamber, his gentle, high
bred face and sweet grey eyes glowing with greeting.
Those of reflective habit may indeed find cause for thought in
realising the power of small things over great, of rule over important
events, of ordinary social observance over the most powerful emotion a
man or woman may be torn or uplifted by. He whose greatest longing on
earth is to speak face to face to the friend whom ill fortune has
caused to think him false, seeing this same friend in a crowded street
a hundred yards distant, cannot dash the passers-by aside and race
through or leap over them to reach, before it is too late, the beloved
object he beholds about to disappear; he cannot arrest that object with
loud outcries, such conduct being likely to cause him to be taken for a
madman, and restrained by the other lookers-on; the tender woman whose
heart is breaking under the weight of misunderstanding between herself
and him she loves, is powerless to attract and detain him if he passes
her, either unconscious of her nearness or of intention coldly averting
his gaze from her pleading eyes. She may know that, once having
crossed the room where she sits in anguish, all hope is lost that they
may meet again on this side of the grave.
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