Robert Jefferson Breckinridge as an Educational Administrator

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 edition. Excerpt: ...hidden poison? VANNA I have but my sandals and this cloak. Strip me of all if you fear treachery. PRINZIVALLE It is not for myself that I fear, but for you. VANNA I count not these things as more than their lives. PRINZIVALLE That is well--you are right. 'Come and rest a little. This is a soldier's couch, rough and hard, narrow as the grave, and little worthy of you. Rest here, upon these skins of aurochs and of great rams that do not know yet how soft and precious a thing a woman's body is. Place beneath your head this gentler cushion--it is a lynx's skin, given me by an African king on a night of victory. vanna sits, closely wrapped in her cloak. The brightness of the lamp falls in your eyes--shall I remove it? VANNA It matters little. PRINZIVALLE Kneels at foot of couch and seizes her hand. Giovanna! vanna raises her head, startled, and looks at him. Oh, Vanna--my Vanna! Yes, I, too, have been accustomed so to call you; but now I have scarce strength to speak the name. It has been so long a time shut a prisoner in my heart that it can no more issue without rending its prison. Nay4 it is my heart--I have no other! Each of its syllables holds my whole life; when I speak them, it is my life that flows away. It was familiar to me; I thought I knew it; I was no longer afraid of it when I had so often said it. For years past, every hour of every day, I have repeated it as some mighty word of love, some spell that one must some day have courage to pronounce at last, were it but once, in the presence of her whom it summoned in vain.... I believed that my lips had taken the shape of it, that at the supreme moment they would know how to say it with such sweetness and respect, with so humble and profound a meekness, that she who heard it would...