Love or marriage Author:William Black 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: CHAPTER VI. SUNLIGHT AGAIN. shadowy doubts and surmises which were at this time oppressing poor Charlie had now reached their climax; and it is not too muc... more »h to say that he had once and for ever fallen from his first estate of unconscious happiness. Love to the lover is an infinite and eternal thing; it encompasses his being; it fills his whole future. All around him is love; all before him is love; the grave itself can put no period to the life of this secret, glad sensation. "When he does realise to himself that love is a temporaryaccident of human life, that its death is a possible thing, the revelation is like the shattering of the world to him. It is probably the first real conviction he receives of the existence of evil in the universe. His faith in the constancy of his mistress may return, but the fatal knowledge that love may at any time grow faint and disappear, has deprived him of his old and settled peace, and only leaves him a temporary and intermittent joy. I speak of those who are truly capable of loving—a small proportion of mankind. Filled with dread of this visionary horror, oscillating between the great self- abandonment of love and the narrow shrinkings of suspicion, Charlie upon this evening arrived at the house of his well- beloved, determined to renew his faith or prove his doubts. Fanny, overwhelmed with remorse for her conduct towards Helstone, was resolved to atone for it, and win back her self-approbation by an unwonted display of gentleness and tenderness to Charlie. As the hour had almost arrived at which she expected him, she ran quickly upstairs, put on the faded old scarlet velvet jacket which she knew he liked, and sat down at the piano. There he found her. She went to him with eyes full of kindness and meek affection; he had nev...« less