h looked into the other's heart, and there dwelt hate--bitter,
loathing, and eternal hate. I had changed my nature; I was no longer the
gentle, up-looking mortal he had loved. I had changed my nature; he was
no longer to me the one glorious and adored being. We gazed on each
other with fear and abhorrence. The dark power, whose awful brow was
fixed upon us like Fate, again was shrouded in the kindling waters. By
an impulse neither could control, the Spirit and I flung ourselves down
the steep, blue air, but apart and each muttering, "Never! never!" And
that word "never" told our destiny. Never could either feel again that
sweet deceit of happiness, which, if it be a lie, is worth all truth.
Never more could each heart be the world of the other.

Our feelings are as little in our power as the bodily structure they
animate. My love had been sudden, uncontrollable, and born not of my own
will--and such was my hate. As little could I master the sick shudder
his image now called up, as I could the passionate beating of the heart
it had once excited. I stood alone in my solitary hall--I gazed on the
eternal fire burning over the tomb of my father, and I wished it were
burning over mine. For the first time I felt the limitations of
humanity. The desire of my race was in me accomplished--I was immortal!
and what was this immortality? A dark and measureless future. Alas! we
had mistaken life for felicity! What was my knowledge? it only served to
show its own vanity; what was my power, when its exercise only served to
work out the decrees of an inexorable necessity? I had parted myself
from my kind, but I had not acquired the nature of a spirit. I had lost
of humanity but its illusions, and they alone are what render it
supportable. The mystic scrolls over which I had once pored with such
intenseness, were now flung aside; what could they teach me? Time was to
me but one great vacancy; how could I fill it up, who had neither labour
nor excitement? I set me down mournfully, and thought of the past. Why,
when love is perished, should its memory remain? I had said to myself,
so long as I have life, one deep feeling must absorb my existence.
A change--and that too of my own earnest seeking--had passed over my
being; and the past, which had been so precious, was now as a frightful
phantasm. The love which alters, in its inconstancy may set up a
new idol, and worship again with a pleasant blindness; but the love
which leaves the heart w