Emilia, for the last two Sundays, had taken Mr. Barrett’s place at the organ.  She was playing the prelude to one of the evening hymns, when the lover, whose features she dreaded to be once more forgetting, appeared in the curtained enclosure.  A stoppage in the tune, and a prolonged squeal of the instrument, gave the congregation below matter to speculate upon.  Wilfrid put up his finger and sat reverently down, while Emilia plunged tremblingly at the note that was howling its life away.  And as she managed to swim into the stream of the sacred melody again, her head was turned toward her lover under a new sensation; and the first words she murmured were, “We have never been in church together, before.”

“Not in the evening,” he whispered, likewise impressed.

“No,” said Emilia softly; flattered by his greater accuracy.

If Wilfrid could have been sure that he would be perfect master of that sentimental crew known to him under the denomination of his feelings, the place he selected for their parting interview might be held creditable to this young officer’s acknowledged strategical ability.  It was a place where any fervid appeals were impossible; where he could contemplate her, listen to her, be near her, alone with her, having nothing to dread from tears, supplications, or passion, as a consequence of the short indulgence of his tenderness.  But he had failed to reckon on the chances that he himself might prove weak and be betrayed by the crew for whose comfort he was always providing; and now, as she sat there, her face being sideways to him, the flush of delight faint on her cheek, and her eyelids half raised to the gilded pipes, while full and sonorous harmony rolled out from her touch, it seemed the very chorus of the heavens that she commanded, and a subtle misty glory descended upon her forehead, which he was long in perceiving to be cast from a moisture on his eyelids.

When the sermon commenced, Emilia quitted the organ and took his hand.  In very low whispers, they spoke: 

“I have wanted to see you so!”

“You see me now, little woman.”

“On Friday week next I am to go away.”

“Nonsense!  You shall not.”

“Your sisters say, yes!  Mr. Pericles has got my father’s consent, they say, to take me to Italy.”

“Do you think of going?”

Emilia gazed at her nerveless hands lying in her lap.

“You shall not go!” he breathed imperiously in her ear.

“Then you will marry me quite soon?” And Emilia looked as if she would be smiling April, at a word.

“My dear girl!” he had an air of caressing remonstrance.

“Because,” she continued, “if my father finds me out, I must go to Italy, or go to that life of torment in London—­seeing those Jew-people—­ horrible!—­or others and the thought of it is like being under the earth, tasting bitter gravel!  I could almost bear it before you kissed me, my lover!  It would kill me now.  Say! say!  Tell me we shall be together.  I shudder all day and night, and feel frozen hands catching at me.  I faint—­my heart falls deep down, in the dark...I think I know what dying is now!”