So she told him, Senhouse, her
only friend; and he cried aloud in his agony, "God save her," while his
soul was saying, "Beatrice never shrank from hell, nor ever looked back.
No more, God be thanked, does Sanchia." When the thing was done, and she
had gone with unbowed head into the deeps, he had known his hours of
desolation; but from that hour she had stood for him "a thing enskied and
sainted." He felt that he was set apart for her worship, and only
regretted that Beatrice had had a better poet for the business than
Sanchia could ever hope for.
For a year after her flight he continued a correspondence with her which
had begun with their first acquaintance; and then he had stopped it, not
she. His reason shall be admitted, to his credit or not. It appeared that
she read his letters, as they came, to Nevile Ingram--she told him so--
and, further, that Ingram was bored. Sanchia did not tell him that, but he
gathered it; and whether he felt that the intimacy was fatally invaded, or
whether he was piqued--he stopped. Within two years or so from that he
wrote once more to tell her that he was about to "join fortunes" with Mary
Germain, a young widow.
She knew what he meant by that; he was too much of a poet to be anything
but shocked at the marriage-bond.
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