streamed from beneath it on my floor. It was she! she was there
listening too, with her ear perhaps close to my brow; she might have
heard my heart beat. "Are you ill?" whispered a voice, which I should
have recognized by a single sigh. "No," I answered, "but I am too
happy! Excess of joy is as exciting as excess of anguish. The fever I
feel is one of life; I do not wish to dispel it, or to fly from it, but
I am sitting up to enjoy it." "Child that you are!" she said, "go and
sleep while I watch; it is now my turn to watch over you." "But you,"
whispered I, "why are you not sleeping?" "I never wish to sleep more,"
she replied; "I would not lose one minute of the consciousness of my
overwhelming bliss. I have but little time in which to enjoy my
happiness, and do not like to give any portion of it to forgetfulness
in sleep. I came to sit here in the hopes of hearing you, or at any
rate to feel nearer to you." "Oh, why still so far?" I murmured. "Why
so far? Why is this wall between us?" "Is there only this door between
us then," she said, "and not our will and our vow? There! if you are
only restrained by this material obstacle, it is removed!" and I heard
her withdraw the bolt on her side. "Yes," she continued, "if there be
not in you some feeling stronger than love itself to subdue and master
your passion, you can pass. Yes," she added with an accent at once more
solemn and more impassioned, "I will owe nothing but to yourself,--you
may pass; you will meet with love equal to your own, but such love
would be my death...."

I was overcome by the violence of my feelings, the impetuous impulse of
my heart that impelled me towards that voice, and the moral violence
that repulsed me; and I fell as one mortally wounded on the threshold
of that closed door. As to her, I heard her sit down on a cushion which
she had taken from a sofa, and thrown on the floor. During the greater
part of the night we continued to converse in a low tone, through the