Page:Pierre.djvu/225

Rh responded as before; the sparks quivered along its strings; and again Pierre felt as in the immediate presence of the spirit.

'Shall I, mother?—Art thou ready? Wilt thou tell me?—Now? Now?'

These words were lowly and sweetly murmured in the same way with the word mother, being changefully varied in their modulations, till at the last now, the magical guitar again responded; and the girl swiftly drew it to her beneath her dark tent of hair. In this act, as the long curls swept over the strings of the guitar, the strange sparks—still quivering there—caught at those attractive curls; the entire casement was suddenly and wovenly illumined; then waned again; while now, in the succeeding dimness, every downward undulating wave and billow of Isabel's tossed tresses gleamed here and there like a tract of phosphorescent midnight sea; and, simultaneously, all the four winds of the world of melody broke loose, and again as on the previous night, only in a still more subtile, and wholly inexplicable way, Pierre felt himself surrounded by ten thousand sprites and gnomes, and his whole soul was swayed and tossed by supernatural tides; and again he heard the wondrous, rebounding, chanted words:

III

Almost deprived of consciousness by the spell flung over him by the marvellous girl, Pierre unknowingly gazed away from her, as on vacancy; and when at last stillness