United States or Ecuador ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Marina had loved the baby the more passionately, perhaps, for the sake of her only sister Toinetta, Piero's child-bride, who had died at the baby's birth, because she was painfully conscious that Toinetta's little flippant life had needed much forgiveness and had been crowned with little gladness.
The jilted Gabriele had accepted the situation with a parade of philosophical scorn which removed him beyond the pale of the sympathy Marina would have offered him; and Marina whose exquisite sense of truth, decorum, and duty had been outraged to a degree beyond Toinetta's comprehension forgot it all in the overwhelming compassion with which she took her little sister in her arms and tried to help her live her difficult life; she realized, as only a large nature could, that love was the only hope for this emergency, and, feeding on her measureless compassion, love, the diviner faculty, grew to be a power.
Through that slow year of Toinetta's life Marina was the veritable angel in the house, not conscious of any self-sacrifice, but only of living intensely, making the living under the same roof possible for these two strong men who looked at life from such different standpoints, soothing the wounded pride of her father by her perfect sympathy while striving to rouse Piero to nobler ideals.
Word Of The Day