She was tall,
and heavier than I had expected, though so greatly emaciated; but the
thought that she was Yoletta's mother, and the mother of the house,
nerved me to my task, and cautiously moving step by step through the
gloom, I carried her safely to that white-haired, moonlit woman of stone
in the long gallery. When I had ascended the steps and brought her
sufficiently near, she put her arms about the statue, and pressed its
stony lips with hers.
"Isarte, Isarte, how cold your lips are!" she murmured, in low,
desponding tones. "Now, when I look into these eyes, which are yours,
and yet not yours, and kiss these stony lips, how sorely does the hunger
in my heart tempt me to sin! But suffering has not darkened my reason; I
know it is an offense to ask anything of Him who gives us life and all
good things freely, and has no pleasure in seeing us miserable. This
thought restrains me; else I would cry to Him to turn this stone to
flesh, and for one brief hour to bring back to it the vanished spirit of
Isarte. For there is no one living that can understand my pain; but you
would understand it, and put my tired head against your breast, and
cover me with your grief-whitened hair as with a mantle.
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