The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d Ed.]

Excerpt: ...Paradise? No! Jenny must never know. And yet, perhaps, if Jenny had been told. Well, the greatest love for another cannot guard all the gates of chance. And, alas! these two, loyal as they were, for one unguarded moment were to leave open a gate of their Paradise, --when we withdraw into Paradise we should see that all the gates are closed, --and Jenny, by a like chance, was to take into her soul one blinding glimpse of them there. It was the evening of the last recital, and Theophil and Isabel had gone down, to Zion a few minutes before the hour arranged, Jenny, who for some trivial reason was detained, to meet them at the hall. An audience was already gathered there; but this Theophil and Isabel avoided, entering the building by the minister's private entrance into his vestry, which communicated by a dark staircase with the chapel and the lecture-hall where the recital was to be given. There was a light in the vestry, but no one was there, though they might have expected Mr. Moggridge. For a moment, to their eternal sorrow, they forgot all but that they were once more alone and together; and as they sought each other's arms, standing in the centre of that grim little room, a weak anguish came over Theophil, and he exclaimed, -- Oh, Isabel, to think that I have lost you! lost you! But Isabel was stronger: No, dear, you have not lost, you have found me. To have lost each other would have been never to have met. Dear, I love to think that you might be weak for my sake. No woman can help a man be strong who cannot first make him weak. Ah, love, how weak I could be for your sake, --and how strong!. but be strong for mine, be strong for Jenny's sake. I love that best. Then for a moment they stood lost once more, locked in an embrace so touchingly kind, so sheltering, so calm, that their very attitude was home; and, had they had ears or eyes for a world outside that home, they might have seen, at that dark half-opened...