whose
inalterable calm was like the cruel impassibility of human justice. The
combat between them had never ceased until this evening, when with a
glance she brought him down, as a falcon making his dizzy spirals in
the air around his prey causes it to fall stupefied to earth, before
carrying it to his eyrie.

We may note within ourselves many a long struggle the end of which is
one of our own actions,--struggles which are, as it were, the reverse
side of humanity. This reverse side belongs to God; the obverse side to
men. More than once Seraphita had proved to Wilfrid that she knew this
hidden and ever varied side, which is to the majority of men a second
being. Often she said to him in her dove-like voice: "Why all this
vehemence?" when on his way to her he had sworn she should be his.
Wilfrid was, however, strong enough to raise the cry of revolt to which
he had given utterance in Monsieur Becker's study. The narrative of
the old pastor had calmed him. Sceptical and derisive as he was, he saw
belief like a sidereal brilliance dawning on his life. He asked himself
if Seraphita were not an exile from the higher spheres seeking the
homeward way. The fanciful deifications of all ordinary lovers he could
not give to this lily of Norway in whose divinity he believed. Why lived
she here beside this fiord? What did she? Questions that received no
answer filled his mind. Above all, what was about to happen between
them? What fate had brought him there? To him, Seraphita was the
motionless marble, light nevertheless as a vapor, which Minna had seen
that day poised above the precipices of the Falberg. Could she thus
stand on the edge of all gulfs without danger, without a tremor of the
arching eyebrows, or a quiver of the light of the eye? If his love was
to be without hope, it was not without curiosity.

From the moment when Wilfrid suspected the ethereal nature of the
enchantress who had told him the secrets of his life in melodious
utterance, he had longed to try to subject her, to keep her to himself,
to tear her from the heaven where, perhaps, she was awaited. Earth and
Humanity seized their prey; he would imitate them. His pride, the only
sentiment through which man can long be exalted, would make him happy in
this triumph for the rest of his life. The idea sent the blood boiling
through his veins, and his heart swelled. If he did not succeed, he
would destroy her,--it is so natural to destroy that which we cannot
posse