as like the last vibrations of an Italian song.

"Ah! no man dies of anguish!" he murmured.

"You are suffering?" she said in a voice whose intonations produced upon
his heart the same effect as that of her look. "Would I could help you!"

"Love me as I love you."

"Poor Minna!" she replied.

"Why am I unarmed!" exclaimed Wilfrid, violently.

"You are out of temper," said Seraphita, smiling. "Come, have I not
spoken to you like those Parisian women whose loves you tell of?"

Wilfrid sat down, crossed his arms, and looked gloomily at Seraphita. "I
forgive you," he said; "for you know not what you do."

"You mistake," she replied; "every woman from the days of Eve does good
and evil knowingly."

"I believe it," he said.

"I am sure of it, Wilfrid. Our instinct is precisely that which makes us
perfect. What you men learn, we feel."

"Why, then, do you not feel how much I love you?"

"Because you do not love me."

"Good God!"

"If you did, would you complain of your own sufferings?"

"You are terrible to-night, Seraphita. You are a demon."

"No, but I am gifted with the faculty of comprehending, and it is awful.
Wilfrid, sorrow is a lamp which illumines life."

"Why did you ascend the Falberg?"

"Minna will tell you. I am too weary to talk. You must talk to me,--you
who know so much, who have learned all things and forgotten nothing; you
who have passed through every social test. Talk to me, amuse me, I am
listening."

"What can I tell you that you do not know? Besides, the request is
ironical. You allow yourself no intercourse with social life; you
trample on its conventions, its laws, its customs, sentiments, and
sciences; you reduce them all to the proportions such things take when
viewed by you beyond this universe."

"Therefore you see, my friend, that I am not a woman. You do wrong
to love me. What! am I to leave the ethereal regions of my pretended
strength, make myself humbly small, cringe like the hapless female of
all species, that you may lift me up? and then, when I, helpless and
broken, ask you for help, when I need your arm, you will repulse me! No,
we can never come to terms."

"You are more maliciously unkind to-night than I have ever known you."

"Unkind!" she said, with a look which seemed to blend all feelings into
one celestial emotion, "no, I am ill, I suffer, that is all. Leave me,
my friend; it is your manly right. We women should ever please you,
entertain you, be gay in y