complete, that she was altogether and eternally mine.

I knew that this could not continue. Sometimes I could not prevent my
thoughts from flying away from the present; then suddenly the complexion
of my dream would change, darkening like a fair landscape when a cloud
obscures the sun. Not forever would the demon of passion slumber and
dream in my breast; with recovered strength it would wake again, and,
ever increasing in power and ever baffled of its desire, would raise
once more that black tempest of that past to overwhelm me. Other darker
visions followed: I would see myself as in a magic glass, lying with
upturned, ghastly face, with many people about me, hurrying to and fro,
wringing their hands and weeping aloud with grief, shuddering at the
abhorred sight of blood on their sacred, shining floors; or, worse
still, I saw myself shivering in sordid rags and gaunt with long-lasting
famine, a fugitive in some wintry, desolate land, far from all human
companionship, the very image of Yoletta scorched by madness to formless
ashes in my brain; and for all sensations, feelings, memories, thoughts,
nothing left to me but a distorted likeness of the visible world, and a
terrible unrest urging me, as with a whip of scorpions, ever on and on,
to ford yet other black, icy torrents, and tear myself bleeding through
yet other thorny thickets, and climb the ramparts of yet other gigantic,
barren hills.

But these moments of terrible depression, new to my life, were
infrequent, and seldom lasted long. Chastel was my good angel; a word, a
touch from her hand, and the ugly spirits would vanish. She appeared to
possess a mysterious faculty--perhaps only the keen insight and sympathy
of a highly spiritualized nature--which informed her of much that was
passing in my heart: if a shadow came there when she had no wish or
strength to converse, she would make me draw close to her seat, and rest