meaning to his words."

"Of course not," I responded.

"No, and I fairly longed to reach out my hand and clutch him,
because--because I was so sorry for him."

"Was sorrow your only feeling?" I asked.

The girl looked at me for a moment, and her eyes filled with tears. Then
she sobbed gently and said, "Oh, Cousin Malcolm, you are so old and so
wise." ("Thank you," thought I, "a second Daniel come to judgment at
thirty-five; or Solomon and Methuselah in one.") She continued: "Tell me,
tell me, what is this terrible thing that has come upon me. I seem to be
living in a dream. I am burning with a fever, and a heavy weight is here
upon my breast. I cannot sleep at night. I can do nothing but long and
yearn for--for I know not what--till at times it seems that some
frightful, unseen monster is slowly drawing the heart out of my bosom. I
think of--of him at all times, and I try to recall his face, and the tones
of his voice until, Cousin Malcolm, I tell you I am almost mad. I call
upon the Holy Virgin hour by hour to pity me; but she is pure, and cannot
know what I feel. I hate and loathe myself. To what am I coming? Where
will it all end? Yet I can do nothing to save myself. I am powerless
against this terrible feeling. I cannot even resolve to resist it. It came
upon me mildly that day at The Peacock Inn, when I first saw him, and it
grows deeper and stronger day by day, and, alas! night by night. I seem to
have lost myself. In some strange way I feel as if I had sunk into
him--that he had absorbed me."

"The iron, the seed, the cloud, and the rain," thought I.