Page:Henry Northcote (IA henrynorthcote00snairich).pdf/342

 your hands; I forgot that a subject so foul was the source of your beautiful words. I had never known before what the living voice of poetry was like. I had never beheld those heights to which a great and noble nature is able to aspire.

"As you spoke in the court and all my enemies hung upon your words, you became a part of this miracle which had happened in myself. You were the breathing embodiment of those august shapes which emerged in all their order and beauty from behind the dark curtains of my nature. Hour by hour, as I listened to the enchantments of your voice, it seemed to steal over me that you, my deliverer, in the empire of your youth would not only free me out of prison, but also you would deliver me out of the bondage of my own soul. Such a tumult of joy came upon me then as I could not believe could visit any human creature. The music of your lips was not only the earnest of my dreams, it was the consolation of my stains."

When the woman had finished her story she rested her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands. Northcote, who had followed so strange a recital with an interest which its attendant circumstances even rendered intense, felt no longer able to withhold an ample meed of pity. And how unfathomable it appeared to him that his defence, which had been inspired at a time when all was darkness concerning her, should yet be vindicated so completely by the facts of her life. Such an intuition was an uncanny weapon. Who could wonder that this buffeted, arrested, slowly maturing, late-developing creature should see in its transactions the revelation of a supernatural power?