ory forsook Zanoni. This desertion, never foreseen, never
anticipated, was yet but the constant fate that attends those who would
place Mind BEYOND the earth, and yet treasure the Heart WITHIN it.
Ignorance everlastingly shall recoil from knowledge. But never yet, from
nobler and purer motives of self-sacrifice, did human love link itself
to another, than did the forsaking wife now abandon the absent. For
rightly had she said that it was not the faithless wife, it WAS the
faithful mother that fled from all in which her earthly happiness was
centred.

As long as the passion and fervour that impelled the act animated
her with false fever, she clasped her infant to her breast, and was
consoled,--resigned. But what bitter doubt of her own conduct, what icy
pang of remorse shot through her heart, when, as they rested for a
few hours on the road to Leghorn, she heard the woman who accompanied
herself and Glyndon pray for safety to reach her husband's side,
and strength to share the perils that would meet her there! Terrible
contrast to her own desertion! She shrunk into the darkness of her own
heart,--and then no voice from within consoled her.

CHAPTER 6.IX.

Zukunft hast du mir gegeben,
Doch du nehmst den Augenblick.
"Kassandra."

(Futurity hast thou given to me,--yet takest from me the Moment.)

"Mejnour, behold thy work! Out, out upon our little vanities of
wisdom!--out upon our ages of lore and life! To save her from Peril I
left her presence, and the Peril has seized her in its grasp!"

"Chide not thy wisdom but thy passions! Abandon thine idle hope of the
love of woman. See, for those who would unite the lofty with the lowly,
the inevitable curse; thy very nature uncomprehended,--thy sacrifices
unguessed. The lowly one views but in the lofty a necromancer or a
fiend. Titan, canst thou weep?"

"I know it now, I see it all! It WAS her spirit that stood beside
our own, and escaped my airy clasp! O strong desire of motherhood
and nature! unveiling all our secrets, piercing space and traversing
worlds!--Mejnour, what awful learning lies hid in the ignorance of the
heart that loves!"

"The heart," answered the mystic, coldly; "ay, for five thousand years I
have ransacked the mysteries of creation, but I have not yet discovered
all the wonders in the heart of the simplest boor!"

"Yet our solemn rites deceived us not; the prophet-shadows, dark with
terror and red with blood, still foretold