and came constantly--now flashing with
feverous radiance, now pale and bloodless as death itself. But ever and
always her countenance wore a look of aversion. She seemed in these
visions, to regard him as a vile necromancer, who first cast her into
the sepulcher, and then brought her back by some hellish art. She had
fascinated him. But he would not allow that he was in love with her. A
man may be fascinated and hate. A man is not necessarily in love with
the woman whose form haunts him. So said Faber to himself; and I can not
yet tell whether he was in love with her or not. I do not know where the
individuality of love commences--when love begins to be love. He must
have been a good way toward that point, however, to have thus betaken
himself to denial. He was the more interested to prove himself free,
that he feared, almost believed, there was a lover concerned, and that
was the reason she hated him so severely for what he had done.

He had long come to the conclusion that circumstances had straitened
themselves around her. Experience had given him a keen eye, and he had
noted several things about her dress. For one thing, while he had
observed that her under-clothing was peculiarly dainty, he had once or
twice caught a glimpse of such an incongruity as he was compelled to set
down to poverty. Besides, what reason in which poverty bore no part,
could a lady have for being alone in a poor country lodging, without
even a maid? Indeed, might it not be the consciousness of the
peculiarity of her position, and no dislike to him, that made her treat
him with such impenetrable politeness? Might she not well dread being
misunderstood!

She would be wanting to pay him for his attendance--and what was he to
do? He must let her pay something, or she would consider herself still
more grievously wronged by him, but how was he to take the money from
her hand? It was very hard that ephemeral creatures of the earth, born
but to die, to gleam out upon the black curtain and vanish again, might
not, for the brief time the poor yet glorious bubble swelled and
throbbed, offer and accept from each other even a few sunbeams in which
to dance! Would not the inevitable rain beat them down at night, and
"mass them into the common clay"? How then could they hurt each
other--why should they fear it--when they were all wandering home to the
black, obliterative bosom of their grandmother Night? He well knew a
certain reply to such reflection, but