Helen's hand firmly, and said in a hollow voice,

"Another! Engaged to another! One word, Helen,--not to him--not to--
Harley--to--"

"I cannot say,--I must not. I have promised," cried poor Helen, and as
Violante let fall her hand, she hurried away. Violante sat down
mechanically; she felt as if stunned by a mortal blow. She closed her
eyes and breathed hard. A deadly faintness seized her; and when it
passed away, it seemed to her as if she were no longer the same being,
nor the world around her the same world,--as if she were but one sense of
intense, hopeless misery, and as if the universe were but one inanimate
void. So strangely immaterial are we really--we human beings, with flesh
and blood--that if you suddenly abstract from us but single, impalpable,
airy thought, which our souls have cherished, you seem to curdle the air,
to extinguish the sun, to snap every link that connects us to matter, and
to benumb everything into death, except woe.

And this warm, young, southern nature but a moment before was so full of
joy and life, and vigorous, lofty hope. It never till now had known its
own intensity and depth. The virgin had never lifted the veil from her
own soul of woman.

What, till then, had Harley L'Estrange been to Violante? An ideal, a
dream of some imagined excellence, a type of poetry in the midst of the
common world. It had not been Harley the man,--it had been Harley the
Phantom. She had never said to herself, "He is identified with my love,
my hopes, my home, my future." How could she? Of such he himself had
never spoken; an internal voice, indeed, had vaguely, yet irresistibly,
whispered to her that, despite his light words, his feelings towards her