to you
then, or you know what it is that means to separate you. My goodness! I
see it so plain!"

But he declined to look thus low, and stood pitifully smiling:--This
spectacle, together with some subtle spur from the talk of love, roused
Emilia from her lethargy. The warmth of a new desire struck around her
heart. The old belief in her power over Wilfrid joined to a distinct
admission that she had for the moment lost him; and she said, "Yes; now,
as I am now, he can abandon me:" but how if he should see her and hear
her in that hushed hour when she was to stand as a star before men?
Emilia flushed and trembled. She lived vividly though her far-projected
sensations, until truly pity for Wilfrid was active in her bosom, she
feeling how he would yearn for her. The vengeance seemed to her so keen
that pity could not fail to come. Thus, to her contemplation, their
positions became reversed: it was Wilfrid now who stood in the darkness,
unselected. Her fiery fancy, unchained from the despotic heart, illumined
her under the golden future.

"Come to us this evening, I will sing to you," she said, and the
'Englishman under a rope' bowed assentingly.

"Sad songs, if you like," she added.

"I have always thought sadness more musical than mirth," said he. "Surely
there is more grace in sadness!"

Poetry, sculpture, and songs, and all the Arts, were brought forward in
mournful array to demonstrate the truth of his theory.

When Emilia understood him, she cited dogs and cats, and birds, and all
things of nature that rejoiced and revelled, in support of the opposite
view.

"Nay, if animals are to be your illustration!" he protested. He had been
perhaps half under the delusion that he spoke with Cornelia, and with a
sense of infinite misery, he compressed the apt distinction that he had
in his mind; which was to show where humanity and simple nature drew a
line, and wherein humanity claimed the loftier seat.

"But such talk must be uttered to a soul," he phrased internally, and
Emilia was denied what belonged to Cornelia.

Hitherto Emilia had refused to sing, and Madame Marini, faithful to her
instructions, had never allowed her to be pressed to sing. Emilia would
brood over notes, thinking: "I can take that; and that; and dwell on such
and such a note for any length of time;" but she would not call up her
voice; she would not look at her treasure. It seemed more to her,
untouched; and went on doubling its worth, until dou