[Exit.
Helen. They will leave me alone. They will leave me here alone. And why could I not have known this one hour sooner?—I could have bid him come to-night—If the invisible powers are plotting against me, it is well. Could I have thought of this?—and yet, how like something I had known before, it all comes upon me.—Can I stay here alone?—Could I?—No never, never! He must come for me to-night. Perchance that pacquet still lies at yonder hut, and it is not yet too late to recal my letter;—if it is—if it is, I must find some other messenger. Thank God!—there is one way. Elliston can send to that camp to-night. He can—even now,—He can—he will.—
[Exit.
DIALOGUE III.
SCENE. The porch. Helen waiting the return of her messenger from the hut.
Helen. How quiet and soft it all lies in this solemn light. Is it illusion?—can it be?—that old, familiar look, that from these woods and hills, and from this moon-lit meadow, seems to smile on me now with such a holy promise of protection and love?—The merry trill in this apple-tree is the very sound that, waking from my infant sleep in the hush of the summer midnight, of old lulled, nay, wakened my first inward thought. Oh that my heart's youngest religion could come again, the feeling with which a little child looks up to these mighty stars, as the spangles on his home-roof, while he stands smiling beneath the awful shelter of the skies, as under a father's dome. But these years show us the evil that mocks that trust.
'Tis he,—What a mere thread of time separates me from my fate, and yet the darkness of ages could not hide it more surely. Already he has reached the lane. Another minute will show me all. Will the pacquet be in his hand, or will it not? I will be calm—it shall be like a picture to me.
Ah! there is an immeasurable power about us, a foreign and strange thing, that answers not to the soul, that seems to know or to heed nothing of the living suffering, rejoicing being of the spirit. Why should I struggle with it any longer? From my weeping childhood to this hour, it hath set its iron bars about me; no—softly yielding, hath it not sometimes, the long, undreamed-of vistas opened, bright as heaven,—and now, maybe—how slow he moves—even now perchance.—This is wrong. The Infinite is One. The Goodness Infinite, whose everlasting smile lighteth the inner soul, and the Power Infinite, whose alien touch without, in darkness comes, they are of One, and the good know it.
The Messenger. (Coming up the path.)
Bless you, Miss! The pacquet had been gone this hour!