“The extremities die first, they say,” answered Zenobia, laughing.  “And so you kiss this poor, despised, rejected hand!  Well, my dear friend, I thank you.  You have reserved your homage for the fallen.  Lip of man will never touch my hand again.  I intend to become a Catholic, for the sake of going into a nunnery.  When you next hear of Zenobia, her face will be behind the black veil; so look your last at it now,—­for all is over.  Once more, farewell!”

She withdrew her hand, yet left a lingering pressure, which I felt long afterwards.  So intimately connected as I had been with perhaps the only man in whom she was ever truly interested, Zenobia looked on me as the representative of all the past, and was conscious that, in bidding me adieu, she likewise took final leave of Hollingsworth, and of this whole epoch of her life.  Never did her beauty shine out more lustrously than in the last glimpse that I had of her.  She departed, and was soon hidden among the trees.  But, whether it was the strong impression of the foregoing scene, or whatever else the cause, I was affected with a fantasy that Zenobia had not actually gone, but was still hovering about the spot and haunting it.  I seemed to feel her eyes upon me.  It was as if the vivid coloring of her character had left a brilliant stain upon the air.  By degrees, however, the impression grew less distinct.  I flung myself upon the fallen leaves at the base of Eliot’s pulpit.  The sunshine withdrew up the tree trunks and flickered on the topmost boughs; gray twilight made the wood obscure; the stars brightened out; the pendent boughs became wet with chill autumnal dews.  But I was listless, worn out with emotion on my own behalf and sympathy for others, and had no heart to leave my comfortless lair beneath the rock.

I must have fallen asleep, and had a dream, all the circumstances of which utterly vanished at the moment when they converged to some tragical catastrophe, and thus grew too powerful for the thin sphere of slumber that enveloped them.  Starting from the ground, I found the risen moon shining upon the rugged face of the rock, and myself all in a tremble.

XXVII.  MIDNIGHT

It could not have been far from midnight when I came beneath Hollingsworth’s window, and, finding it open, flung in a tuft of grass with earth at the roots, and heard it fall upon the floor.  He was either awake or sleeping very lightly; for scarcely a moment had gone by before he looked out and discerned me standing in the moonlight.

“Is it you, Coverdale?” he asked.  “What is the matter?”

“Come down to me, Hollingsworth!” I answered.  “I am anxious to speak with you.”

The strange tone of my own voice startled me, and him, probably, no less.  He lost no time, and soon issued from the house-door, with his dress half arranged.

“Again, what is the matter?” he asked impatiently.