e of the
dying! How strongly does Nature plead for them, that we should draw our
first breath in their arms, as we sigh away our last upon their faithful
breasts!

With white, bare feet, her hair loosely knotted, clad as the starlight
knew her, and the morning when she rose from slumber, save that she had
twisted a scarf round her long dress, she stood still as a stone before
me, holding in one hand a lighted coil of waxtaper, and in the other
a silver goblet. I held my own lamp close to her, as if she had been a
figure of marble, and she did not stir. There was no breach of propriety
then, to scare the Poor Relation with and breed scandal out of. She had
been "warned in a dream," doubtless suggested by her waking knowledge
and the sounds which had reached her exalted sense. There was nothing
more natural than that she should have risen and girdled her waist, and
lighted her taper, and found the silver goblet with "Ex dono pupillorum"
on it, from which she had taken her milk and possets through all
her childish years, and so gone blindly out to find her place at the
bedside,--a Sister of Charity without the cap and rosary; nay, unknowing
whither her feet were leading her, and with wide blank eyes seeing
nothing but the vision that beckoned her along.--Well, I must wake her
from her slumber or trance.--I called her name, but she did not heed my
voice.

The Devil put it into my head that I would kiss one handsome young girl
before I died, and now was my chance. She never would know it, and I
should carry the remembrance of it with me into the grave, and a rose
perhaps grow out of my dust, as a brier did out of Lord Lovers, in
memory of that immortal moment! Would it wake her from her trance? and
would she see me in the flush of my stolen triumph, and hate and despise
me ever after? Or should I carry off my trophy undetected, and always
from that time say to myself, when I looked upon her in the glory of
youth and the splendor of beauty, "My lips have touched those roses
and made their sweetness mine forever"? You think my cheek was flushed,
perhaps, and my eyes were glittering with this midnight flash of
opportunity. On the contrary, I believe I was pale, very pale, and
I know that I trembled. Ah, it is the pale passions that are the
fiercest,--it is the violence of the chill that gives the measure of the
fever! The fighting-boy of our school always turned white when he went
out to a pitched battle with the bully of som