r more surely. From the
crown of her head to her feet and along her spine an icy shudder ran;
then suddenly intolerable heat suffused her nerves, beat in her veins
and overpowered her extremities with electric shocks like those of the
torpedo. Too feeble to resist, she felt herself drawn by a mysterious
power to the depths below, wherein she fancied that she saw some monster
belching its venom, a monster whose magnetic eyes were charming her,
whose open jaws appeared to craunch their prey before they seized it.

"I die, my Seraphitus, loving none but thee," she said, making a
mechanical movement to fling herself into the abyss.

Seraphitus breathed softly on her forehead and eyes. Suddenly, like
a traveller relaxed after a bath, Minna forgot these keen emotions,
already dissipated by that caressing breath which penetrated her body
and filled it with balsamic essences as quickly as the breath itself had
crossed the air.

"Who art thou?" she said, with a feeling of gentle terror. "Ah, but I
know! thou art my life. How canst thou look into that gulf and not die?"
she added presently.

Seraphitus left her clinging to the granite rock and placed himself at
the edge of the narrow platform on which they stood, whence his eyes
plunged to the depths of the fiord, defying its dazzling invitation. His
body did not tremble, his brow was white and calm as that of a marble
statue,--an abyss facing an abyss.

"Seraphitus! dost thou not love me? come back!" she cried. "Thy danger
renews my terror. Who art thou to have such superhuman power at thy
age?" she asked as she felt his arms inclosing her once more.

"But, Minna," answered Seraphitus, "you look fearlessly at greater
spaces far than that."

Then with raised finger, this strange being pointed upward to the blue
dome, which parting clouds left clear above their heads, where
stars could be seen in open day by virtue of atmospheric laws as yet
unstudied.

"But what a difference!" she answered smiling.

"You are right," he said; "we are born to stretch upward to the
skies. Our native land, like the face of a mother, cannot terrify her
children."

His voice vibrated through the being of his companion, who made no
reply.

"Come! let us go on," he said.

The pair darted forward along the narrow paths traced back and forth
upon the mountain, skimming from terrace to terrace, from line to line,
with the rapidity of a barb, that bird of the desert. Presently they
reached a