,
covered them with kisses, and exclaimed, in a voice broken by sobs, "It
is I--Cephyse--I have found you again--it was not my fault that I
abandoned you! Forgive me, forgive--"

"Wretched woman!" cried Morok, irritated at this meeting, which might,
perhaps, be fatal to his projects; "do you wish to kill him? In his
present state, this agitation is death. Begone!" So saying, he seized
Cephyse suddenly by the arm, just as Jacques, waking, as it were, from a
painful dream, began to distinguish what was passing around him.

"You! It is you!" cried the Bacchanal Queen, in amazement, as she
recognized Morok, "who separated me from Jacques!"

She paused; for the dim eye of the victim, as it rested upon her, grew
suddenly bright.

"Cephyse!" murmured Jacques; "is it you?"

"Yes, it is I," answered she, in a voice of deep emotion; "who have
come--I will tell you--"

She was unable to continue, and, as she clasped her hands together, her
pale, agitated, tearful countenance expressed her astonishment and
despair at the mortal change which had taken place in the features of
Jacques. He understood the cause of her surprise, and as he contemplated,
in his turn, the suffering and emaciated countenance of Cephyse, he said
to her, "Poor girl! you also have had to bear much grief, much misery--I
should hardly have known you."

"Yes," replied Cephyse, "much grief--much misery--and worse than misery,"
she added, trembling, whilst a deep blush overspread her pale features.

"Worse than misery?" said Jacques, astonished.

"But it is you who have suffered," hastily resumed Cephyse, without
answering her lover.

"Just now, I was going to make an end of it--your voice has recalled me
for an instant--but I feel something here," and he laid his hand upon his
breast, "which never gives quarter. It is all the same now--I have seen
you--I shall die happy."

"You shall not die, Jacques; I am here--"

"Listen to one, my girl. If I had a bushel of live coal in my stomach, it
could hardly burn me more. For more than a month, I have been consuming
my body by a slow fire. This gentleman," he added, glancing at Morok,
"this dear friend, always undertook to feed the flame. I do not regret
life; I have lost the habit of work, and taken to drink and riot; I
should have finished by becoming a thorough blackguard: I preferred that
my friend here should amuse himself with lighting a furnace in my inside.
Since what I drank just now, I am certain