ble.

"Now your answer,--quick?"

"I have decided. The love of Viola has vanished from my heart. The
pursuit is over."

"You have decided?"

"I have; and now my reward."

"Thy reward! Well; ere this hour to-morrow it shall await thee."

Zanoni gave the rein to his horse; it sprang forward with a bound: the
sparks flew from its hoofs, and horse and rider disappeared amidst the
shadows of the street whence they had emerged.

Mervale was surprised to see his friend by his side, a minute after they
had parted.

"What has passed between you and Zanoni?"

"Mervale, do not ask me to-night! I am in a dream."

"I do not wonder at it, for even I am in a sleep. Let us push on."

In the retirement of his chamber, Glyndon sought to recollect his
thoughts. He sat down on the foot of his bed, and pressed his hands
tightly to his throbbing temples. The events of the last few hours; the
apparition of the gigantic and shadowy Companion of the Mystic, amidst
the fires and clouds of Vesuvius; the strange encounter with Zanoni
himself, on a spot in which he could never, by ordinary reasoning, have
calculated on finding Glyndon, filled his mind with emotions, in which
terror and awe the least prevailed. A fire, the train of which had been
long laid, was lighted at his heart,--the asbestos-fire that, once lit,
is never to be quenched. All his early aspirations--his young ambition,
his longings for the laurel--were merged in one passionate yearning to
surpass the bounds of the common knowledge of man, and reach that solemn
spot, between two worlds, on which the mysterious stranger appeared to
have fixed his home.

Far from recalling with renewed affright the remembrance of the
apparition that had so appalled him, the recollection only served to
kindle and concentrate his curiosity into a burning focus. He had said
aright,--LOVE HAD VANISHED FROM HIS HEART; there was no longer a serene
space amidst its disordered elements for human affection to move and
breathe. The enthusiast was rapt from this earth; and he would have
surrendered all that mortal beauty ever promised, that mortal hope ever
whispered, for one hour with Zanoni beyond the portals of the visible
world.

He rose, oppressed and fevered with the new thoughts that raged within
him, and threw open his casement for air. The ocean lay suffused in the
starry light, and the stillness of the heavens never more eloquently
preached the morality of repose to the madness of ear