Nay, why, any more than Ajax, should I die in the dark?  Never again will I enter the cell, never again!  The wide universe shall receive my breath.  Lower the back of my chair, pull away the cushions, wrap my cloak round me, Anselmo.  There!  I will lie, and wait, and look up.  Give me ghostly counsel, my friend, console me.  You are not too weary with this long tale?  Tell me I needed all the tears I have shed to quench the fiery defiance, the independence of heaven and tumult of earth in my being.  If you could tell me that she had not been false, that she never feigned her passion to decoy, that, Austrian though she were—­Ah, but I had evidence!  I had evidence! his words, that ate out my life like gangrene and rust.—­Speak slower, Anselmo, slower.  Can it be that I sinned most, when I held his words before hers,—­his black damning falsehoods?—­Mother of God! do you know what you say?

Tell me, then, that I am a fool,—­that not through other loss than the loss of faith did the curse fall on me!  Tell me, then, that these dark ways lead me out on a height!  Needful the shadow and the groping.  He anointed my eyes with the clay beneath his feet,—­I was blind, but now I see God!

Repeat, Anselmo, repeat that she was true, though the knowledge blast me with self-consuming pangs.  But, true or false, one thing she promised me:  though other spheres, though other lives had come between us, she would be with me in my dying hour.  Soon the bell will toll that hour, and toll my knell!

* * * * *

What is this, Anselmo,—­this face that hangs between me and heaven,—­this pitying, sorrowing countenance?—­Ave Maria!—­Never!  Never!  Still of the earth, this melting mouth, these violet eyes, this brow of snow, this fragrant bosom pillowing my head!  Mirage of fainting fancy,—­out, beautiful thing, away!  Do not torment me with such a despairing lie! do not cheat me into death!  Let me at least look on the unobstructed sky, as I sink lower and lower to my eternal rest!

* * * * *

Still there?  Still there?  Still bending above me, smiling and weeping, sweet April face?  Oh, were they truly thy lips that lay on mine, then, that stamped them with life’s impress, that woke me?  Are they truly thy fingers that pressed my throbless temples?  These arms that are wound about me, are thine?  Thy heart beats for me, thy tears flow, thy perfect womanhood does not recoil in horror?  Lenore!  Lenore! is it thou?

* * * * *

Nay, nay, Sweet, ask me no question; I have wronged thee; he shall tell thee how.  Yet best thou shouldst never hear it.  Sin to thee greater than all treachery had been.  Forgive, forgive!  I go,—­in meeting, leave thee; but be glad for me,—­whether I sleep or whether I wake, know that a great curse will have fallen from me.  Swathe my memory in thy love.  Kiss me again, child!  Rock me a little; stoop lower, and croon those old mountain-songs that once you sang when the sunshine soaked the sward and your hair was crowned with blue morning-glories.