The Dear Departed by Edgar Saltus

Love is a fever. Marriage is a febrifuge. That is the rule. This marriage was not an exception. Only its antipyretic effects were not immediately observable. At stations along the route the fever lifted them to chimerical altitudes, sank them to spaceless depths, lowered them deeper, lifted them vertiginously, caught and carried them beyond the earth, beyond the horizons of the known, beyond the confines of the real, disclosing through vistas undivined, those mysterious affinities that similarize the flesh and spirit. In fresh ascensions, the fair, illusory promises of love and life were uttered by them both. In new descents the vain, yet lovely vows, Forever, Never, were interchanged again. And so it went.

The duo is very archaic, but to them it seemed highly original, essentially unique, entirely their own composition. It seemed too capable of infinite variations. Through its interludes the memory of a murmur of other songs once filtered in on Wyvill, and jarred him as an oath will jar. Trella's memories were less resonant. They were pages that girlhood had left quite blank, and at which along the route now and then she stopped and mused. With the refrain of that duo shaking constant stars in her ears it seemed inconceivable to her that such blankness there could be. Whereupon, after considering the past, she contemplated the future. The perspectives looked very spacious.