He felt a faint struggling within his clasp; her head drooped against him; his whole form was bathed in the flowing glossiness of her long and unimprisoned hair. Brushing the locks aside, he now gazed upon the death-like beauty of the face, and caught immortal sadness from it. She seemed as dead; as suffocated,—the death that leaves most unimpaired the latent tranquillities and sweetnesses of the human countenance.
He would have called aloud for succor; but the slow eyes opened upon him; and slowly he felt the girl’s supineness leaving her; and now she recovers herself a little,—and again he feels her faintly struggling in his arms, as if somehow abashed, and incredulous of mortal right to hold her so. Now Pierre repents his over-ardent and incautious warmth, and feels himself all reverence for her. Tenderly he leads her to a bench within the double casement; and sits beside her; and waits in silence, till the first shock of this encounter shall have left her more composed and more prepared to hold communion with him.
“How feel’st thou now, my sister?”
“Bless thee! bless thee!”
Again the sweet, wild power of the musicalness of the voice, and some soft, strange touch of foreignness in the accent,—so it fancifully seemed to Pierre, thrills through and through his soul. He bent and kissed her brow; and then feels her hand seeking his, and then clasping it without one uttered word.
All his being is now condensed in that one sensation of the clasping hand. He feels it as very small and smooth, but strangely hard. Then he knew that by the lonely labor of her hands, his own father’s daughter had earned her living in the same world, where he himself, her own brother, had so idly dwelled. Once more he reverently kissed her brow, and his warm breath against it murmured with a prayer to heaven.
“I have no tongue to speak to thee, Pierre, my brother. My whole being, all my life’s thoughts and longings are in endless arrears to thee; then how can I speak to thee? Were it God’s will, Pierre, my utmost blessing now, were to lie down and die. Then should I be at peace. Bear with me, Pierre.”
“Eternally will I do that, my beloved Isabel! Speak not to me yet awhile, if that seemeth best to thee, if that only is possible to thee. This thy clasping hand, my sister, this is now thy tongue to me.”
“I know not where to begin to speak to thee, Pierre; and yet my soul o’erbrims in me.”
“From my heart’s depths, I love and reverence thee; and feel for thee, backward and forward, through all eternity!”