Cruel As The Grave

To say that these wedded lovers were very happy, would scarcely express

the delirium of pure joy in which they had dreamed away their days and

nights for the last few weeks--joy that both were too young and untried

to know could not last for ever, could not indeed even last long--joy so

elevated in its insanity as almost to tempt some thunderbolt of

malignant fate to fall upon it with destroying force, even as the highly

rarefied air sometimes draws on the whirlwind and the storm.

But then the story of their loves was rare and strange, and almost

justified the intensity of their mutual devotion, and that story is

briefly this: