the night of their mutual vision? There was something more than racial
resemblance in form and feature between Sioned and Weir Penrhyn; there
was absolute identity of soul and mind.
He strode rapidly from one end of the room to the other. Every
nerve in his body seemed vibrating, but his mind acted rapidly and
sequentially. He put the links together one by one, until, from the
moment of his last meeting with Sioned Penrhyn at Constantinople to
the climax of his vision in his study, the chain was complete. Love,
then, as well as genius, had triumphed over the vengeance of Dafyd
Penrhyn and Catherine Dartmouth. In that moment he felt no affection
for his grandmother. She had worshipped and spoilt him, and had shown
him only her better side; but the weakness and evil of her nature had
done him incalculable injury, and he was not prepared to forgive her
at once.
He returned to his seat. Truly they all were the victims of inexorable
law, but the law was just, and if it took to-day it gave to-morrow. If
he and Sioned Penrhyn had been destined to short-lived happiness and
tragic death in that other existence, there was not an obstacle or
barrier between them in the present. And if--He pushed his chair
suddenly back and brought his brows together. A thought had struck him
which he did not like. He got up and put another log on the fire. Then
he went over to the table and took up a book--a volume of Figuier. He
sat down and read a few pages, then threw down the book, and drawing
writing materials toward him, wrote a half-dozen business letters.
When they were finished, together with a few lines to Weir, and no
other correspondence suggested itself, he got up and walked the length
of the room several times. Suddenly he brought his fist violently down
on the table.
"I am a fool," he exclaimed. "The idea of a man with my experience
with women--" And then his voice died away and his hand relaxed, an
expression of disgust crossing his face. He sank into a chair by the
table and leaned his head on his hand. It was true that he was a
man of the world, and that for conventional morality he had felt the
contempt it deserved. Nevertheless, in loving this girl the finest and
highest instincts of his nature had been aroused. He had felt for her
even more of sentiment than of passion. When a man loves a girl whose
mental purity is as absolute as her physical, there is, intermingled
with his love, a leavening quality of reverence, and t
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