Alpha Book

But that mattered little. The wooing, the winning and the
marrying of the exquisite girl were to make up Orsino's life, and fifty
or sixty years of idyllic happiness were to be the reward of their
mutual devotion. Had she not spent twenty such years herself? Then why
should not all the rest be possible?
The dreams came and went and she was too sensible not to laugh at them.
That was not the youth of Giovanni, her husband, nor of men who even
faintly resembled him in her estimation. Giovanni had wandered far, had
seen much, and had undoubtedly indulged more than one passing affection,
before he had been thirty years of age and had loved Corona. Giovanni
would laugh too, if she told him of her vision of two young and
beautiful married saints. And his laugh would be more sincere than her
own. Nevertheless, her dreams haunted her, as they have haunted many a
loving mother, ever since Althaea plucked from the flame the burning
brand that measured Meleager's life, and smothered the sparks upon it
and hid it away among her treasures.


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