[Doctor Claudius, A True Story by F. Marion Crawford]@TWC D-Link book
Doctor Claudius, A True Story

CHAPTER XV
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There was no answer, only the wet fog all around, and those two beautiful faces ashy pale in the mist, and very near together.

One instant so--and then--ah, God! they have cast the die at last, for he has wound his mighty arms about her, and is passionately kissing the marble of her cheek.
"My beloved, my beloved, I love you--with, all my heart, and with all my soul, and with all my strength"-- but she speaks no word, only her arms pass his and hang about his neck, and her dark head lies on his breast; and could you but see her eyes, you would see also the fair pearls that the little god has formed deep down in the ocean of love--the lashes thereof are wet with sudden weeping.

And all around them the deep, deaf fog, thick and muffled as darkness, and yet not dark.
"Ugh!" muttered the evil genius of the sea, "I hate lovers; an' they drown not, they shall have a wet wooing." And he came and touched them all over with the clamminess of his deathly hand, and breathed upon them the thick, cold breath of his damp old soul.

But he could do nothing against such love as that, and the lovers burned him and laughed him to scorn.
She was very silent as she kissed him and laid her head on his breast.
And he could only repeat what was nearest, the credo of his love, and while his arms were about her they were strong, but when he tried to take them away, they were as tremulous as the veriest aspen.
The great tidal wave comes rolling in, once in every lifetime that deserves to be called a lifetime, and sweeps away every one of our landmarks, and changes all our coast-line.

But though the waters do not subside, yet the crest of them falls rippling away into smoothness after the first mad rush, else should we all be but shipwrecked mariners in the sea of love.


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