Read "A Singular Life" by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The summer slid, Bayard knew not how. They separated as so many confused lovers do in the complicated situations of our later life; wherein we love no longer in the old, outright, downright way, when men and women took each other for better, for worse, and dared to run the risk of loving, without feeling responsible for the consequences. We are past all that; and whether it is the worse or the better for us, who shall say?
At least, these two had the healthy ring to their love; in that great and simple feeling was no delinquency or default. Bayard did not hesitate or quibble -- one day a lover, the next a prudential committee, after the fashion of such feeble mathematicians as go by the name of men, to-day. He was incapable of calculating his high passion; there was no room in his soul or body for a doubt to take on lease of life. He loved her; as the greatest of women might be proud and humble to be loved; as the smallest would be vain to be.