“Speak it, my beloved,” she said, in clear and thrilling tones.
“Drink,” his deep voice sounded, “drink the deep pledge in the wine from the bright ideal shore, to the Spirit whose wings span the world, whose life pulses through the universe—the Spirit for whom we live and die!”
“I know, I know!” she cried. “Spirit, we drink to thee in the wine from the holy shore! Spirit of every noble thought and deed and passion, whose breath is life to liberty and justice, and the soul of man—to thee, for whom we live and die—True Love, we drink to thee!”
They quaffed the fiery and aërial wine, and dashing the goblets ringing and shivering on the floor, they sprang into each other’s arms. One long and close embrace—one long and passionate clinging kiss—and they withdrew.
“Hereafter!”
Their voices rang together by a common impulse in the word: and with one long dreaming gaze of impassioned tenderness upon her proud and radiant face, he rushed away to his death like a bridegroom to his bride.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
IN LIBERTY’S DEFENCE.
A low, guttural mutter of distant thunder shuddered through the air as Harrington rushed into the night, and turning at the head of the street, he saw the knotted snakes of the lightning flash and writhe, and vanish, inextricable, on the slow-heaving wall of heavy thunder-cloud that filled the western sky. Black poisonous vapors, the flying couriers of the coming tempest, fled swiftly up the zenith, and half obscured the livid and tottering moon; and projected in the yet unclouded purple east before him, redly glimmered the large few stars. He did not pause, but strode rapidly on, while the fitful gusts of the rising wind swept the dim, deserted streets into storms of dust around him. It was a wild night, and heaven and earth seemed to reel in the gathering darkness; but his soul was unshaken, and he was strong to die.
The moon was hid before he had reached Beacon street, and a solid blackness, lit only at intervals by wild, bright flashes of still distant lightning, filled the lampless streets. Behind him, as he sped on, the low ominous thunder shuddered through the black vast, and the dust swept around him in rustling storms through the darkness. He met no one—every person was safely housed, and even the watchmen had crept away into sheltered nooks from the tempest.