Page:Ernestus Berchtold or the Modern Œdipus.djvu/42

30 separately to the young men, and advised them to steal from their companions and meet me at a certain hour about a mile from the town.

They retired to rest, and I laid myself down in the street to sleep; I was soon lost to all external objects, and I again saw hovering at my side, her, who had seemed in the morning but a vision. She smiled upon me, again urged me by those words;—but suddenly it seemed as if the earth parted between us, and a huge chasm opened at my feet; we seemed to stretch our hands towards each other; I threw myself into the gulph, and awoke. Finding it but a dream, I again attempted to compose myself to sleep, but in vain; her image still stood before me, and the moment I rested upon it, the idea of my orphan state and her apparent affluence startled me. I had not asked her name. I knew nothing of her; her form, her face, her voice, and her words already began to appear to my memory as the recollections of an