"A kiss," replied she, with scorn; "no, Japhet, look upon me, for it is
the last time you will behold my youth; look upon me as a sepulchre,
fair without but unsavoury and rottenness within. Let me do you a
greater kindness, let me awaken your dormant energies, and plant that
ambition in your soul, which may lead to all that is great and good--a
better path and more worthy of a man than the one which I have partly
chosen, and partly destiny has decided for me. Look upon me as your
friend; although perhaps, you truly say, no friend unto myself.
Farewell--remember that to-morrow you will send the medicine which I
require."

I left her, and returned home: it was late. I went to bed, and having
disclosed as much to Timothy as I could safely venture to do, I fell
fast asleep, but her figure and her voice haunted me in my dreams. At
one time, she appeared before me in her painted, enamelled face, and
then the mask fell off, and I fell at her feet to worship her extreme
beauty; then her beauty would vanish, and she would appear an image of
loathsomeness and deformity, and I felt suffocated with the atmosphere
impregnated with the smell of liquor. I would wake and compose myself
again, glad to be rid of the horrid dream, but again would she appear,
with a hydra's tail, like Sin in Milton's Paradise Lost, wind herself
round me, her beautiful face gradually changing into that of a skeleton.
I cried out with terror, and awoke to sleep no more, and effectually
cured by my dream of the penchant which I felt towards Miss Aramathea
Judd.




Chapter VI