pursuit in which he was engaged carried him apart from the sympathy of
which he spoke, and that he was concentrating his efforts and interest
entirely upon himself, and that the more he succeeded the more remotely he
should be carried away, and that his final triumph would be the complete
seclusion of himself from all that breathed,--the converting him, from an
interested actor into a cold and disconnected spectator of all mankind's
warm and sympathetic life. So, as it turned out, this interview with Rose
was one of those in which, coming no one knows from whence, a nameless
cloud springs up between two lovers, and keeps them apart from one another
by a cold, sullen spell. Usually, however, it requires only one word,
spoken out of the heart, to break that spell, and compel the invisible,
unsympathetic medium which the enemy of love has stretched cunningly
between them, to vanish, and let them come closer together than ever; but,
in this case, it might be that the love was the illusive state, and the
estrangement the real truth, the disenchanted verity. At all events, when
the feeling passed away, in Rose's heart there was no reaction, no warmer
love, as is generally the case. As for Septimius, he had other things to
think about, and when he next met Rose Garfield, had forgotten that he had
been sensible of a little wounded feeling, on her part, at parting.

By dint of continued poring over the manuscript, Septimius now began to
comprehend that it was written in a singular mixture of Latin and ancient
English, with constantly recurring paragraphs of what he was convinced was
a mystic writing; and these recurring passages of complete
unintelligibility seemed to be necessary to the proper understanding of
any part of the document. What was discoverable was quaint, curious, but
thwarting and perplexing, because it seemed to imply some very great
purpose, only to be brought out by what was hidden.

Septimius had read, in the old college library during his pupilage, a work