chilling look; but his face is as calm and bright as the face of an
angel;--and his voice!--it thrills amidst all the music which plays there
night and day--softer than their softest note. And we are married,
Ellinor, at last. We were married in heaven, and all the angels came to
the marriage! I am now so happy that we were not wed before! What! are
you weeping, Ellinor? Ah, we never weep in heaven! but we will all go
there again--all of us, hand in hand!"

These affecting hallucinations terrified them, lest they should settle
into a confirmed loss of reason; but perhaps without cause. They never
lasted long, and never occurred but after moods of abstraction of unusual
duration. To her they probably supplied what sleep does to others--a
relaxation and refreshment--an escape from the consciousness of life. And
indeed it might always be noted, that after such harmless aberrations of
the mind, Madeline seemed more collected and patient in thought, and for
the moment, even stronger in frame than before. Yet the body evidently
pined and languished, and each week made palpable decay in her vital
powers.

Every time Aram saw her, he was startled at the alteration; and kissing
her cheek, her lips, her temples, in an agony of grief, wondered that to
him alone it was forbidden to weep. Yet after all, when she was gone, and
he again alone, he could not but think death likely to prove to her the
most happy of earthly boons. He was not sanguine of acquittal, and even
in acquittal, a voice at his heart suggested insuperable barriers to
their union, which had not existed when it was first anticipated.

"Yes, let her die," he would say, "let her die; she at least is certain
of Heaven!" But the human infirmity clung around him, and notwithstanding
this seeming resolution in her absence, he did not mourn the less, he was