d to another soil the passion that obscures my gaze and
disarms my power, unseen, unheard, unrecognised, I could watch over his
fate, and secretly prompt his deeds, and minister to her welfare through
his own. But time rushes on! Through the shadows that encircle me, I
see, gathering round her, the darkest dangers. No choice but flight,--no
escape save with him or me. With me!--the rapturous thought,--the
terrible conviction! With me! Mejnour, canst thou wonder that I would
save her from myself? A moment in the life of ages,--a bubble on the
shoreless sea. What else to me can be human love? And in this exquisite
nature of hers,--more pure, more spiritual, even in its young affections
than ever heretofore the countless volumes of the heart, race after
race, have given to my gaze: there is yet a deep-buried feeling
that warns me of inevitable woe. Thou austere and remorseless
Hierophant,--thou who hast sought to convert to our brotherhood every
spirit that seemed to thee most high and bold,--even thou knowest, by
horrible experience, how vain the hope to banish FEAR from the heart of
woman.

My life would be to her one marvel. Even if, on the other hand, I sought
to guide her path through the realms of terror to the light, think of
the Haunter of the Threshold, and shudder with me at the awful hazard!
I have endeavoured to fill the Englishman's ambition with the true
glory of his art; but the restless spirit of his ancestor still seems to
whisper in him, and to attract to the spheres in which it lost its own
wandering way. There is a mystery in man's inheritance from his fathers.
Peculiarities of the mind, as diseases of the body, rest dormant for
generations, to revive in some distant descendant, baffle all treatment
and elude all skill. Come to me from thy solitude amidst the wrecks of
Rome! I pant for a living confidant,--for one who in the old time has
himself known jealousy and love. I have sought commune with Adon-Ai; but
his presence, that once inspired such heavenly content with knowledge,
and so serene a confidence in destiny, now only troubles and perplexes
me. From the height from which I strive to search into the shadows of
things to come, I see confused spectres of menace and wrath. Methinks I
behold a ghastly limit to the wondrous existence I have held,--methinks
that, after ages of the Ideal Life, I see my course merge into the most
stormy whirlpool of the Real. Where the stars opened to me their gates,
the