for, as if by some fascination, those eyes seemed always turned
toward him, or, if by chance he was beyond their reach, to the
spot where they could first behold his return.

So this nursling of a palace, evidently dying out on the wide sea,
with only rough men about her, had neither a word nor a look of
reproach for the one who had dragged her forth to so wretched a
fate. Even in her mind's wanderings, she seldom went back to former
pomps or pleasures, and her tongue preferred rather to stumble
through the rough and unfamiliar language in which of late she
had been so terribly schooled, than to speak that of her youth.
Once, when after a short absence her attendant returned to her
side, she said,--

"My heart was trying to cross the waves that were between us, and
oh! how it was tossed upon them--and it ached, and--and--" Then,
giving a sigh of relief, she sank back, closed her eyes, and slumbered
restfully.

He disposed of the lamp he had just lighted, and then, with an
expression as inscrutable as ever, he stood looking down upon her.

While this scene was being enacted, I marked through the open portal
of the cabin--in one of those strange distractions that occur to
us amidst the most intense feelings of our lives--the stars above
us growing brighter and brighter as the shades of the twilight
deepened. Suddenly turning from the couch, he also, at a stride,
stood in full view of those bright revelations of the darkness; but
his eye sought them with no such abstracted regard as mine. Fixedly
and sternly he seemed to be watching among them some portentous
index of fate. Soon a change came over his countenance, and he
resumed his place beside the scarcely breathing form. Then the
fountains of the great deep within him were broken up, and the
rushing torrent of its emotions shook his whole frame and convulsed
his features. Stooping, he kissed the insensible girl passionately,
again and again, and he would, I believe, have clasped her to his
bosom if I, fearing for her the effects of his stormy transports,
had not caught his arm. He needed no explanation of my interruption,
neither was he startled or incensed by it, and he seemed more like
one reluctantly obeying some sudden restraining impulse of his
own than yielding to that of another.

"No," he said, "I must not cut short a single flicker of that bright
spirit; the wondrously beautiful vessel that it glorifies will be
cold clay soon enough! ashes from which n