The brown frock was low-necked and short-sleeved, too. And the
picture of her, down-stairs, showed her with so red a lip, so round
an arm, so soft, so white a bosom!
Thou might'st think thou hadst drunk the water of Paradise
who had tasted the nectar of her lip.... The ends of her
ringlets fell into the hand like as the sleeve of the
generous in the hand of the needy.
Oh, Jessamine!
She had been so splendidly tall a woman, that as he held her grisly
head upon his shoulder the little shoes that rattled upon her
shriveled feet were well below his knees. One great rope of her
blue-black hair escaped and fell down the back of his white
coat, and as he moved it moved, too, with a lazy and languid
coquettishness horribly travesting youth and beauty. It was such
wonderful hair! Small wonder young Richard had praised its dark
splendor, and kissed its shining folds to his undoing!
"Jessamine," Nicholas Jelnik said as he bent over her, "you shall
have your chance to rest. You shall sleep under the open sky. Nature
shall have you, Jessamine, and make you over into something of
loveliness and of peace."
"Because she loved much, much shall be forgiven her," I whispered.
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