“And it is the innocence he would destroy,” said Isabel, rather to herself than to him.
Glyndon drew back, conscience-stricken.
“No, it may not be!” she said, rising, and extricating her hand gently from his grasp. “Leave me, and forget me. You do not understand, you could not comprehend, the nature of her whom you think to love. From my childhood upward, I have felt as if I were marked out for some strange and preternatural doom; as if I were singled from my kind. This feeling (and, oh! at times it is one of delirious and vague delight, at others of the darkest gloom) deepens 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, my 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 rigor and tension of that wonderful face relaxed, the color 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!”