Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: deuce. I saw no danger, anticipated no wound. I could not make the personal application Churm suggested. I listened, greatly touched' and interested, but without foreboding. " A look and a word," Churm began again, " seemed to flash upon me the conviction that the woman I loved was sullied. A foul-minded man may do foul wrong by such a fancy. My mind was pure. My first impulse was to rebel against the agonizing doubt, and be truer and tenderer than before. You comprehend the feeling?" " Thoroughly. Your impulse would be mine." " ' Love,' " said I to myself, " ' tests love,' " Churm continued. " ' I mistrust, because I do not love enough. I must beware of being personally base and cruelly unjust to her. My suspicion shall be the evanescent dream of an unwholesome instant, — like Ophelia's song.' But still the anguish and the dread stayed in my heart. What could I do ? Wait? Watch? Make myself a spy to examine this seeming sully, and find it an indelible stain ? Uncover the bad side of my nature, apply it to hers, and study the kind ind degree of the electricity evoked by the con tact! Should I protect myself by any such baseness ? While these thoughts were tangling in my brain, an outer force cut the knot." " Some one spilt the philter," said I, thinking of the scene over Densdeth's wine. "Denman was my unconscious ally," Chunn continued, without noticing the interruption " Denman saved me from the worst, the bitterest fate that can befall a true man, — to marry a woman whose truth and purity he can allow himself to doubt." " Bitter indeed ! A blight of all the bloom and harvest of a life! " said I; — so fancy had taught me. " Ah, yes! as the ' marriage of true minds' alone gives fragrance and ripeness. I have missed the harvest, I escaped the blight. Denman, r... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.