Mirage
Joscelyn Penhallow is estranged from Hugh Dark because she impulsively fell in love with Frank Dark on her wedding day. Ten years later, Frank Dark returns and she discovers he is no longer the romantic hero of her dreams. Joscelyn wearies of her situation at home, and rumours of Hugh’s plans for a divorce reach her. In Chapter 4 of A Tangled Web:
She, Joscelyn, was a woman without love–without a home–without roots. She must spend the rest of her life forever beating with futile hands at closed doors. An old line of poetry, read long ago and forgotten for years, flickered back into memory:
Exceeding comfortless and worn and old
For a dream’s sake.Yes, that had been written for her. “For a dream’s sake.” And now the dream was over.
Mirage
By Christina Rosetti
The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
Was but a dream; and now I wake,
Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
For a dream’s sake.
I hang my harp upon a tree,
A weeping willow in a lake;
I hang my silent harp there, wrung and snapped
For a dream’s sake.
Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
For a dream’s sake.
