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Wanderings of a beauty

Chapter 31: CHAPTER XXX. CONCLUSION
By Mrs. Edwin James
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About This Book

The narrative follows a strikingly beautiful young woman whose charms bring admiration and trouble, as a close friend and narrator recounts her upbringing, school days, and uneasy relations with a neglectful stepfamily. It traces fashionable courtship, a prominent marriage, travels through European cities including presentations at court and Italian scenes, and episodes of flirtation, first love, and bereavement. Interspersed diary entries, letters, and reflections examine the social consequences of beauty, the costs of coquettishness, and the pressures of public life. The story concludes with the woman's later domestic struggles, illness and death, and the narrator's sober meditation on idealism, duty, and loss.

CHAPTER XXX.
 
CONCLUSION

And Philip has departed, and Evelyn is alone with the sweet memories of that thrice blessed eve, alone with her undying love, her high resolve. No, not alone, for ever in spirit she beholds deep within the pure and liquid wells of those beloved eyes, the fond gaze of unutterable tenderness, for ever she looks beyond this weary vale of tears, and sees in faith, the golden gates unclose through which the radiance of the Divine Sun streams downward, to enlighten the fields of care.

And moons have waxed and waned, and her Philip is now a General in the Federal Army, his name on every lip, his praise on every tongue. And thus it must ever be. Men must DO great and heroic deeds—and we must ENDURE and SUFFER. Which is the truer heroism? But we, too, may look beyond, and upward to the ever present One who, if during the Divine Humanity of His earth life, He had occasion, not unfrequently, to rebuke the errors and falsities of mankind, was ever tender and compassionate to the faults and failings of woman.

Oh! my sisters—“Be ye also merciful, as He is merciful.”

THE END.

 

  • Transcriber’s Notes:
    • Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected.
    • Typographical errors were silently corrected.
    • Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book.