Page:The Talisman.pdf/56

108 every other object was indistinct, for uppermost of all lay the skin of shagreen; but so small, no wonder he had overlooked it—it was the size of a willow-leaf, fragile and withered as they are with the first frost! How prodigal of life had the last three months been!—not the slightest wish of Ellen's but had found an echo in his! Why, the mere hope that a summer-day would not bring premature destruction to a half-blown rose—even such light words were those of the grave! What was Ellen’s self but a beautiful death? Again every faculty was absorbed in a passionate longing for life—life under any circumstances. He left his home on the instant; wrote from London, that pressing business took him abroad for some time; and in the course of a week he was settled in a solitary cottage at Clifton. Here his days passed in a melancholy monotony; he rose at the same hour, took a long walk, dined, walked again, and then slept. He read no books, he saw no friends, he had no wish but for life; and night after night he examined the frail remnant of shagreen, and as often found it undiminished. At this rate he might live for years—and his heart leaped for joy at the thought of this dull and unnatural existence. Youth, wealth, fame, love, had all merged in the dread of death. It was a fine soft evening in September, when he leant, as was his wont, in an arm-chair by the window, watching with fixed but languid gaze