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280 steal over my highest moods and my gayest moments. I now believe it was the unconscious omen of my early death. The weight of an unfulfilled destiny has been for ever upon me, though then I knew it not. And yet, Francesca, when I look within my own heart, and feel how true and high have been its impulses,—when I think how my mind has revelled in its own beautiful imaginings, which asked but time for development, I cannot deem that such things were given in vain. I believe that they have been here tried and nourished for another sphere. I feel a strong and increasing consciousness that my world is beyond the tomb."

"And mine," exclaimed Francesca, in an agony of grief she could no more repress, "is still this lonely, this dreary life! Oh, my God! have mercy on me, and let me die too!"

"Francesca," said Guido, in a low, earnest voice, "there is something within me which tells me it will not be for long. Sorrow and early death have been busy in our line. My doom is fixed,—and your fragile life will be a frail barrier to an inexorable fate!"