'place your hand upon my
brow; let me feel your cool touch. Speak to me, too, for your gentle
voice is like a breeze that hath freshness as well as music. Speak to
me, but forbear to bless me! Utter not one word of those forms of
speech which our childhood was taught to consider sacred!'

'Alas! and what then shall I say? Our language of affection is so woven
with that of worship, that the words grow chilled and trite if I banish
from them allusion to our gods.'

'Our gods!' murmured Apaecides, with a shudder: 'thou slightest my
request already.'

'Shall I speak then to thee only of Isis?'

'The Evil Spirit! No, rather be dumb for ever, unless at least thou
canst--but away, away this talk! Not now will we dispute and cavil; not
now will we judge harshly of each other. Thou, regarding me as an
apostate! and I all sorrow and shame for thee as an idolater. No, my
sister, let us avoid such topics and such thoughts. In thy sweet
presence a calm falls over my spirit. For a little while I forget. As
I thus lay my temples on thy bosom, as I thus feel thy gentle arm
embrace me, I think that we are children once more, and that the heaven
smiles equally upon both. For oh! if hereafter I escape, no matter what
peril; and it be permitted me to address thee on one sacred and awful
subject; should I find thine ear closed and thy heart hardened, what
hope for myself could countervail the despair for thee? In thee, my
sister, I behold a likeness made beautiful, made noble, of myself.
Shall the mirror live for ever, and the form itself be broken as the
potter's clay? Ah, no--no--thou wilt listen to me yet! Dost thou
remember how we went into the fields by Baiae, hand in hand together, to
pluck the flowers of spring? Even so, hand in hand, shall we enter the
Eternal Garden, and crown ourselves with imperishable asphodel!'

Wondering and bewildered by words she could not comprehend, but excited
even to tears by the plaintiveness of their tone, Ione listened to these
outpourings of a full and oppressed heart. In truth, Apaecides himself
was softened much beyond his ordinary mood, which to outward seeming was
usually either sullen or impetuous. For the noblest desires are of a
jealous nature--they engross, they absorb the soul, and often leave the
splenetic humors stagnant and unheeded at the surface. Unheeding the
petty things around us, we are deemed morose; impatient at earthly
interruption to the diviner dreams, we