way; the singers took leave of
him, and those colleagues who ventured to share in the ovation,
accompanied him to the door of the house with a last good night; he
crossed the deserted threshold with a sense of sorrowful oppression, as
if instead of this pleasurable event, some heavy grief had befallen
him, and he felt actual horror at the thought that he must now remain
through the long night alone with his despair.

Again he threw himself on the sofa, but the blissful certainty of
happiness, in which he had just rested there, had fled. He had never
felt more clearly, that he had lost the capacity for enjoying any
pleasure, which she did not share with him, that his weal and woe were
so indissolubly connected with this other self, that the mere thought
of losing her palsied every aspiration of his soul.

Suddenly he fancied he heard a light foot coming along the street--now
it ascended the steps--seemed to pause a moment at the door, which was
ajar--and then to come through the dark entry--a footstep he knew so
well! but no, impossible! She is far away or could his thoughts have
had the power--? A hand is laid on the door knob; Edwin starts up with
a beating heart, is about to say: "Who is there?" and prepares to
reconcile himself to see a strange form enter, when the door opens, and
Leah who has witnessed every thing that has just taken place before the
house,--with what emotion! standing unnoticed among the crowd, not
daring to approach!--appears, trembling from head to foot, like a
criminal before her judge, on the threshold of the room she had left
with such an agitated soul.

Another instant and she was clasped in his arms. As if beside himself
in the exuberance of this unprecedented happiness, he raised the
tottering form and carried, rather than led her to the sofa.

"Leah!" he exclaimed, "is it you?--you in bodily form clasped to my
heart again? I hold, I feel you, come, speak one word, compose
yourself--oh! you do not know what you have done for me in not going
away!"

Meantime she had recovered from her bewilderment, but was still
incapable of uttering a word. But he--all that he had just said in
imagination, his newly awakened, passionate love, his wooing for her
heart, the doubts and fears of a lover, he now poured forth aloud,
while again and again seeking with his quivering lips her hands, her
cheeks, the quiet mouth for which he had so ardently longed. "And you
are here," he cried, "you have not fle