you, since I no longer require your care? Oh, as to me," she proceeded
in a resolute tone of confidence, "I know nothing of you but your name
and countenance, but I know your heart! A century could not teach me
more!"

"For my part," said I, faltering, "I would wish to learn nothing of all
that makes you a being like unto ourselves, and bound by the same links
as us to this wretched world. I require but to know this,--that you
have traversed it, and that you have allowed me to contemplate you from
afar, and to remember you always."

"Oh, do not deceive yourself thus!" she replied; "do not see in me a
deified delusion of your own heart; I should have to suffer too much
when the chimera vanished. View me as I am; as a poor woman, who is
dying in despondency and solitude, and who will take with her from
earth no feeling more divine than that of pity. You will understand
this, when I tell you who I am," added she; "but first answer me on one
point, which has disquieted me since the day I first saw you in the
garden. Why, young and gentle as you seem to be, are you so lonely and
so sad? Why do you fly from the company and conversation of our host,
to wander alone on the lake, and in the most secluded parts of the
mountains, or to retire into your room? Your light burns far into the
night, I am told. Have you some secret in your heart that you confine
to solitude?" She waited my answer with visible anxiety, and kept her
eyes closed, as if to conceal the impression it might make upon her.
"My secret," said I, "is to have none; to feel the weight of a heart
that no enthusiasm upheld until this hour; of a heart which I have
endeavored to engage in unsatisfactory attachments, and which I have
ever been obliged to resume with such bitterness and loathing, as
forever to discourage me, young and feeling as I am, from loving." I