Both had died since
then--the roses and his hopes--And Arthur almost wished that he, too,
were dead when he read Mrs. Meredith's letter and saw the gulf his
feet were treading. Like the waves of the sea, his love for Anna came
rolling back upon him, augmented and intensified by all that he had
suffered, and by the terrible conviction that it could not be,
although, alas! "it might have been."
He repeated the words over and over again, as stupified with pain, he
sat gazing at vacancy, thinking how true was the couplet--
"Of all sad words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are these, it might have been."
He could not even pray at once, his brain was so confused, but when,
at last, the white, quivering lips could move, and the poor aching
heart could pray, he only whispered, "God help me to do right," and by
that prayer he knew that for a single instant there had crept across
his mind the possibility of sacrificing Lucy, who loved and trusted
him so much. But only for an instant. He could not cast her from him,
though to take her now, knowing what he did, were almost death itself.
"But God can help me to bear it," he cried; then, falling upon his
knees, with his face bowed to the floor, the Rector of St.
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