an," said he, gravely,
"it is necessary that we should again meet to-night. It is necessary
that you should, ere the first hour of morning, decide on your own fate.
I know that you have insulted her whom you profess to love. It is not
too late to repent. Consult not your friend: he is sensible and wise;
but not now is his wisdom needed. There are times in life when, from the
imagination, and not the reason, should wisdom come,--this, for you, is
one of them. I ask not your answer now. Collect your thoughts,--recover
your jaded and scattered spirits. It wants two hours of midnight. Before
midnight I will be with you."

"Incomprehensible being!" replied the Englishman, "I would leave the
life you have preserved in your own hands; but what I have seen this
night has swept even Viola from my thoughts. A fiercer desire than that
of love burns in my veins,--the desire not to resemble but to surpass
my kind; the desire to penetrate and to share the secret of your own
existence--the desire of a preternatural knowledge and unearthly power.
I make my choice. In my ancestor's name, I adjure and remind thee of thy
pledge. Instruct me; school me; make me thine; and I surrender to thee
at once, and without a murmur, the woman whom, till I saw thee, I would
have defied a world to obtain."

"I bid thee consider well: on the one hand, Viola, a tranquil home, a
happy and serene life; on the other hand, all is darkness,--darkness,
that even these eyes cannot penetrate."

"But thou hast told me, that if I wed Viola, I must be contented with
the common existence,--if I refuse, it is to aspire to thy knowledge and
thy power."

"Vain man, knowledge and power are not happiness."

"But they are better than happiness. Say!--if I marry Viola, wilt thou
be my master,--my guide? Say this, and I am resolved.

"It were impossible."

"Then I renounce her? I renounce love. I renounce happiness. Welcome
solitude,--welcome despair; if they are the entrances to thy dark and
sublime secret."

"I will not take thy answer now. Before the last hour of night thou
shalt give it in one word,--ay or no! Farewell till then."

Zanoni waved his hand, and, descending rapidly, was seen no more.

Glyndon rejoined his impatient and wondering friend; but Mervale, gazing
on his face, saw that a great change had passed there. The flexile and
dubious expression of youth was forever gone. The features were locked,
rigid, and stern; and so faded was the natural bl