shall I lose, if I assent to this? What else will pass from my
remembrance?"

"No knowledge; no result of study; nothing but the intertwisted
chain of feelings and associations, each in its turn dependent on,
and nourished by, the banished recollections. Those will go."

"Are they so many?" said the haunted man, reflecting in alarm.

"They have been wont to show themselves in the fire, in music, in
the wind, in the dead stillness of the night, in the revolving
years," returned the Phantom scornfully.

"In nothing else?"

The Phantom held its peace.

But having stood before him, silent, for a little while, it moved
towards the fire; then stopped.

"Decide!" it said, "before the opportunity is lost!"

"A moment! I call Heaven to witness," said the agitated man, "that
I have never been a hater of any kind,--never morose, indifferent,
or hard, to anything around me. If, living here alone, I have made
too much of all that was and might have been, and too little of
what is, the evil, I believe, has fallen on me, and not on others.
But, if there were poison in my body, should I not, possessed of
antidotes and knowledge how to use them, use them? If there be
poison in my mind, and through this fearful shadow I can cast it