opped upon them! And you shall have _that_ too,
if you will--if you must!"

"Which? what? dearest creature, but compose yourself--pray do!" he said,
again alarmed.

"_That_ you sent with the lock of hair--_this_ hair!" she answered
wildly. "But you _will_ leave me the little lock? Oh, there's plenty to
cut for _another_ here!" and she laughed hysterically, frightfully, and
played with his profusion of raven hair; but it was mournful play.
"Leave me--_do_ leave poor Winifred that, David, for the love of God! In
mercy, leave it! I will not ask for the picture again--I will not _wish_
it, if _you_ say I must not; but the hair--the poor bit of hair--he! oh,
misery! he shall never see it! I myself will never cry over it--never
look at it, if you think it wrong--never till I'm dying, David--dying!
There will be no harm then, you know, in looking--in a poor dying
creature's look, who has done with passions, life, love, every thing.
And none--none shall see it but those who lay me out, or they who find
my--oh! we none of us know where we may die, or how! It may be alone,
dearest--_alone_! Oh, the comfort it will be to have a part of very
_you_ to hold--to hold by, like this very hand, in my death-damp one.
Let me have it!" she shrilly implored, in delirious energy. "I want it
to take with me to my death-bed--to my death-pit--my grave, whatever it
may be--to heaven itself--to our place of meeting again, if it were
possible! Oh, that it _were_ possible! and that I might bring back to
you there the kiss--the long kiss--you shall leave on these wretched
lips when we part for ever and for ever here! _Will_ you take it from
me, David, my heart, my soul? No, you will not?"

The crisis of love's parting agony was at its height. Half-conscious of
her own dangerous prostration of soul and mind under its power, she
turned from the dear object, and rested her forehead against the trunk
of their old tree of assignation; and a steady, sadder shower of tears,
relieving her full heart, followed this storm of various and rapid
emotions, sweeping over one weakened mind, like thunderclouds charged
with electric fire, borne on a whirlwind over a whole landscape, in a
few minutes of mingled gloom and glory. For, in the sublime of passion,
whatever be its nature, is there not a terrible joy, a secret glorifying
of the earthy nature, which we may compare to such elemental war--now
hanging all heaven in mourning, and bringing night on noonday, and