c influence upon her.

At length the carriage rolled away, passing under the great shadow of
the gate, and turned into the valley, leaving the old town behind. As
the portals came together with a crash, and the heavy chains rattled,
the echo of doom simultaneously smote the heart of her that was going
and of him that was left behind. The beautiful past was over--and what
was to replace it? A moment later, at a sharp angle of the road, Pauline
turned her head on the cushion, and she saw him standing under the
walnut tree. The vision was brief, as the horses took a sudden bound
forward, but the poor girl had time to raise herself on her elbow and
faintly wave a white handkerchief. Roderick beheld the token, and
forgetting everything in the enthusiasm of the moment, rushed forward
to the brink of the parapet. He would have leaped down in the face of a
thousand pointed bayonets and dashed through the serried ranks of foes,
but, alas! as he gazed once more, the vehicle had disappeared forever in
the windings of the vale.

"Too late, too late!" exclaimed the poor fellow, turning on his heel and
plunging the point of his sword into the tufted grass. "She is gone,
never to return. Farewell to all my dreams of happiness, to all my hopes
and aspirations. What is glory to me now? Why should I live to gather
fame? Who is there now that will reap my laurels and wear them on snowy
forehead for my sake? Oh, fate, oh, fate!"

And he walked away through solitary lanes till he reached his quarters,
utterly broken down in heart. The whole forenoon he lay on his iron bed,
oblivious of all the world and steeped in his own tremendous sense of
dereliction. It was in vain that the golden spring sun streamed through
his windows rocking the room in waves of splendour. The glad sounds of
voices, in the Square, of men and women enjoying the beautiful weather
in promenades, were unheeded by him. The great voice of cannon from the
Citadel, answering some hostile movement of the enemy, was powerless to
arouse him from his torpor. There is nothing so terrible to encounter as
the last phases of a moral crisis, nothing so painful as to realize that
one has yet two or three points to gain of that fatal resignation which
he thought he had mastered. The cup of poison may be dashed off in a
gulp of rapid determination, but it is the slow drinking of the dregs
that is revoltingly loathsome.

Thus Roderick had to go through the ultimate stages of the comba