It would not do--the lady could make neither head nor tail of it.This is a poor attempt at levity.Alas!I am sad enough."Would she go and leave me so?If it was only my own behaviour,I still did not doubt of success.I knew the sincerity of my love,and she would be convinced of it in time.If that was all,I did not care:but tell me true,is there not a new attachment that is the real cause of your estrangement?Tell me,my sweet friend,and before you tell me,give me your hand (nay,both hands)that I may have something to support me under the dreadful conviction."She let me take her hands in mine,saying,"She supposed there could be no objection to that,"--as if she acted on the suggestions of others,instead of following her own will--but still avoided giving me any answer.I conjured her to tell me the worst,and kill me on the spot.Any thing was better than my present state.I said,"Is it Mr.C-----?"She smiled,and said with gay indifference,"Mr.C-----was here a very short time.""Well,then,was it Mr.
-----?"She hesitated,and then replied faintly,"No."This was a mere trick to mislead;one of the profoundnesses of Satan,in which she is an adept."But,"she added hastily,"she could make no more confidences.""Then,"said I,"you have something to communicate.""No;but she had once mentioned a thing of the sort,which I had hinted to her mother,though it signified little."All this while I was in tortures.Every word,every half-denial,stabbed me."Had she any tie?""No,I have no tie!""You are not going to be married soon?""I don't intend ever to marry at all!""Can't you be friends with me as of old?""She could give no promises.""Would she make her own terms?""She would make none."--"I was sadly afraid the LITTLE IMAGE was dethroned from her heart,as I had dashed it to the ground the other night."--"She was neither desperate nor violent."I did not answer--"But deliberate and deadly,"--though I might;and so she vanished in this running fight of question and answer,in spite of my vain efforts to detain her.The cockatrice,I said,mocks me:so she has always done.The thought was a dagger to me.My head reeled,my heart recoiled within me.I was stung with scorpions;my flesh crawled;I was choked with rage;her scorn scorched me like flames;her air (her heavenly air)withdrawn from me,stifled me,and left me gasping for breath and being.It was a fable.
She started up in her own likeness,a serpent in place of a woman.She had fascinated,she had stung me,and had returned to her proper shape,gliding from me after inflicting the mortal wound,and instilling deadly poison into every pore;but her form lost none of its original brightness by the change of character,but was all glittering,beauteous,voluptuous grace.Seed of the serpent or of the woman,she was divine!I felt that she was a witch,and had bewitched me.Fate had enclosed me round about._I_was transformed too,no longer human (any more than she,to whom I had knit myself)my feelings were marble;my blood was of molten lead;my thoughts on fire.I was taken out of myself,wrapt into another sphere,far from the light of day,of hope,of love.I had no natural affection left;she had slain me,but no other thing had power over me.Her arms embraced another;but her mock-embrace,the phantom of her love,still bound me,and I had not a wish to escape.So I felt then,and so perhaps shall feel till I grow old and die,nor have any desire that my years should last longer than they are linked in the chain of those amorous folds,or than her enchantments steep my soul in oblivion of all other things!I started to find myself alone--for ever alone,without a creature to love me.I looked round the room for help;I saw the tables,the chairs,the places where she stood or sat,empty,deserted,dead.I could not stay where I was;I had no one to go to but to the parent-mischief,the preternatural hag,that had "drugged this posset"of her daughter's charms and falsehood for me,and I went down and (such was my weakness and helplessness)sat with her for an hour,and talked with her of her daughter,and the sweet days we had passed together,and said I thought her a good girl,and believed that if there was no rival,she still had a regard for me at the bottom of her heart;and how I liked her all the better for her coy,maiden airs:and I received the assurance over and over that there was no one else;and that Sarah (they all knew)never staid five minutes with any other lodger,while with me she would stay by the hour together,in spite of all her father could say to her (what were her motives,was best known to herself!)and while we were talking of her,she came bounding into the room,smiling with smothered delight at the consummation of my folly and her own art;and I asked her mother whether she thought she looked as if she hated me,and I took her wrinkled,withered,cadaverous,clammy hand at parting,and kissed it.
