superior to mine. I had been defrauded, for a moment, of the empire of
my muscles. A little moment for that sufficed. If my destruction had
not been decreed, why was the image of Clarice so long excluded? Yet why
do I say long? The fatal resolution was conceived, and I hastened to the
execution, in a period too brief for more than itself to be viewed by
the intellect.

What then? Were my hands imbrued in this precious blood? Was it to this
extremity of horror that my evil genius was determined to urge me? Too
surely this was his purpose; too surely I was qualified to be its
minister.

I lifted the weapon. Its point was aimed at the bosom of the sleeper.
The impulse was given.

At the instant a piercing shriek was uttered behind me, and a
stretched-out hand, grasping the blade, made it swerve widely from its
aim. It descended, but without inflicting a wound. Its force was spent
upon the bed.

Oh for words to paint that stormy transition! I loosed my hold of the
dagger. I started back, and fixed eyes of frantic curiosity on the
author of my rescue. He that interposed to arrest my deed, that started
into being and activity at a moment so pregnant with fate, without
tokens of his purpose or his coming being previously imparted, could
not, methought, be less than divinity.

The first glance that I darted on this being corroborated my conjecture.
It was the figure and lineaments of Mrs. Lorimer. Negligently habited in
flowing and brilliant white, with features bursting with terror and