Page:The Coming Race, etc - 1888.djvu/309

Rh with me day by day. It is like the shadow of twilight, spreading slowly and solemnly round. My hour approaches: a little while and it will be night!"

As she spoke, Glyndon listened with visible emotion and perturbation. "Isabel!" he exclaimed, as she ceased, "your words more than ever enchain me to you. As you feel, I feel. I, too, have been ever haunted with a chill and unearthly foreboding. Amidst the crowds of men I have felt alone. In all my pleasures, tny toils, my pursuits, a warning voice has murmured in my ear, 'Time has a dark mystery in store for thy manhood.' When you spoke it was as the voice of my own soul."

Isabel gazed upon him in wonder and fear. Her countenance was as white as marble: and those features, so divine in their rare symmetry, might have served the Greek with a study for the Pythoness, when, from the mystic cavern and the bubbling spring, she first hears the voice of the inspiring God. Gradually the rigour and tension of that wonderful face—relaxed the colour returned, the pulse beat, the heart animated the frame.

"Tell me," she said, turning partially aside, "tell me, have you seen, do you know, a stranger in this city? one of whom wild stories are afloat."

"You speak of Zicci : I have seen him! I know him? and you? Ah! he, too, would be my rival?—he, too, would bear thee from me!"

"You err," said Isabel, hastily, and with a deep sigh; "he pleads for you: he informed me of your love; he besought me not—not to reject it."

"Strange being! incomprehensible enigma! why did you name him?"

"Why? ah! I would have asked, whether, when you first saw him, the foreboding, the instinct, of which you spoke came on you more fearfully, more intelligibly than before—whether you felt at once repelled from him, yet attracted towards him—whether you felt (and the actress spoke with hurried animation) that with HIM was connected the secret of your life!"

"All this I felt," answered Glyndon, in a trembling voice, "the first time I was in his presence ; though all around me was gay;—music, amidst lamp-lit trees, light converse near, and Heaven without a cloud above, my knees knocked together, my hair bristled, and my blood curdled like ice ; since then he has divided my thoughts with thee."

"No more, no more," said Isabel, in a stifled tone; "there must be the hand of fate in this ; I can speak no more to you now; farewell."