“Muriel,” said he with solemn and passionate tenderness, “do you remember what you said when we lay down to slumber? It comes again to me now. You said: ‘It is the fourth night; a very little night; but the fifth night will be sweet and long, and full of rest.’ Oh, my beloved, sweet and long, and full of rest may it be to you! Sweet and long, and full of rest, it will be to me. To-night I go from you. Can you bear that I should go when I am not to return? For the dream meant death, and I am going away to die.”
One spasm of overmastering pain convulsed her features, and vanished. The next instant her face was calm, between its fall of shadowy tresses; her lips were lightly closed; her eyes were fixed on his. But a torrent rush of memories overswept her—memories of omens and presentiments that had mysteriously foreshadowed this; and a mighty feeling rose within her, and told her that this was the voice of the prescient soul. Not for an instant did she think he was deceived, and the calmness that sank upon her spirit was the shadow of eternity.
“To die!” she answered, in a slow, rapt voice. “Going away from me to die.”
Her lips closed, and pressing one hand to her bosom, she lifted her clear, still eyes to heaven, and her countenance became pale and radiant as though it gazed upon the face of God.
There was a long interval of terrible silence.
“It is true,” she said at length, in low, abstracted tones, “he is to leave me. Our happiness foreran the ages. The world could not sustain it. The music was too divinely sweet to last, and it melts back from earth! Well, well, I know it now. The days have been filled with tokens and prophecies of this, and now I understand them. Yes—he is to die!”
Slowly her eyes grew back to him. He sat motionless, his face pallid in shadow, gazing with mournful awe upon her clear, pale features.
“Have you had presentiments of this, Muriel?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, in a hushed voice; “there have been many. They crowd upon me now. You remember what I told you of that morning when I thought you loved Emily—how strangely your face smiled on me in my reverie from that immeasurable distance. I know now what it meant. That was a veiled prevision. Oh, my beloved, you smiled upon my soul from the depths of Eternity!”