Such things seem foolish, no doubt, in the measure of fact, in the
glaring light of our day. The thought is none the less noble. The dream
of an untainted love, the vision of unspotted youth and pure maiden, the
glory of unbroken faith kept whole by man and wife in holy wedlock, the
pride of stainless name and stainless race--these things are not less
high because there is a sublimity in the strength of a great sin which
may lie the closer to our sympathy, as the sinning is the nearer to our
weakness.
When old Saracinesca looked up from under his bushy brows and laughed
and said that his grandson was in love, he thought no more of what he
said than if he had remarked that Orsino's beard was growing or that
Giovanni's was turning grey. But Corona's pretty fancies received a
shock from which they never recovered again, and though she did her best
to call them back they lost all their reality from that hour. The plain
fact that at one and twenty years the boy is a man, though a very young
one, was made suddenly clear to her, and she was faced by another fact
still more destructive of her ideals, namely, that a man is not to be
kept from falling in love, when and where he is so inclined, by any
personal influence whatsoever.
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