Page:Pierre.djvu/64

50 'Let us hie homeward, Pierre. Some nameless sadness, faintness, strangely comes to me. Foretaste I feel of endless dreariness. Tell me once more the story of that face, Pierre,—that mysterious, haunting face, which thou once told'st me, thou didst thrice vainly try to shun. Blue is the sky, oh, bland the air, Pierre;—but—tell me the story of the face,—the dark-eyed, lustrous, imploring, mournful face, that so mystically paled, and shrunk at thine. Ah, Pierre, sometimes I have thought,—never will I wed with my best Pierre, until the riddle of that face be known. Tell me, tell me, Pierre;—as a fixed basilisk, with eyes of steady, flaming mournfulness, that face this instant fastens me.'

'Bewitched! bewitched!—Cursed be the hour I acted on the thought, that Love hath no reserves. Never should I have told thee the story of that face, Lucy. I have bared myself too much to thee. Oh, never should Love know all!'

'Knows not all, then loves not all, Pierre. Never shalt thou so say again;—and Pierre, listen to me. Now,—now, in this inexplicable trepidation that I feel, I do conjure thee, that thou wilt ever continue to do as thou hast done; so that I may ever continue to know all that agitatest thee, the airiest and most transient thought, that ever shall sweep into thee from the wide atmosphere of all things that hem mortality. Did I doubt thee here;—could I ever think, that thy heart hath yet one private nook or corner from me;—fatal disenchanting day for me, my Pierre, would that be. I tell thee, Pierre—and 'tis Love's own self that now speaks through me—only in unbounded confidence and interchangings of all subtlest secrets, can Love possibly endure. Love's self is a secret, and so feeds on secrets, Pierre. Did I only know of thee, what the whole common world may know—what then were Pierre to me?—Thou must be wholly a