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One traveller returns, by D.C. Murray and H. Herman
One traveller returns by DC Murray and H Herman Author:David Christie Murray 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 HI. These things the released soul of Vreda the queen heard and saw. On a sudden, when the body was racked with pains unspeakable, and the sick frame ... more »was filled with loathings of itself, there had arisen within her a pang so dreadful that it may barely be thought of, and thereafter fell upon her a most heavenly peace and rest. Barxelhold's voice railed on, but it was powerless to afHict her. And whilst yet she wondered at the calm which had come upon her, the voice of Wenegog spoke in the outer hall. ' Listen, sons and daughters of There ! Tour queen is dead !' And Vreda knew that this was the secret of her rest. She looked down upon the fleshly house she had inhabited and was touched with acold and shadowy pity. She saw Feltor shiver beneath Barxelhold's guilty embrace, and she knew that she had forgiven them both already. Barxelhold's murderous joy and Feltor's lust and fear were as real to the soul of the queen as their bodily presence before her. She stretched out hands which were the ethereal presentment of those which lay motionless in death, and with an impulse of dispassionate pardon and farewell she laid them on the heads of the living. They started guiltily apart, staring upon each other with a vivid horror, and whether she were rapt away from them, or they from her, she knew not. They were gone, and but for the new and as yet strange calm and quiet, all was gone. And there was neither sound nor silence, nor light nor dark, nor heat nor cold, nor height nor depth, nor place, nor anything save that self which existed and was at peace. Then out of this empty negation grew a something palpable to the soul as the living hand is palpable to the living hand, and Vreda beheld (as it were) a woman of this world, nude, and of a lofty and tranquil counten...« less