rnest!" I cried, all at once yielding to the emotions that were
bearing me down with such irresistible power, "you frighten me, you fill
me with unspeakable dread. There seems a deep abyss yawning between us,
and I stand upon one icy brink and you on the other, and the chasm
widens, and I stretch out my arms in vain to reach you, and I call, and
nothing but a dreary echo answers, and I look into my heart and do not
find you there. Save me, Ernest, save me,--my husband, save yourself
from a doom so dreadful!"

Excited by the awful picture of desolation I had drawn, I slid down upon
my knees and raised my clasped hands, as if pleading for life beneath
the axe of the executioner. I must have been the very personification of
despair, with my hair wildly sweeping round me, and hands locked in
agony.

"To live on, live on together, year after year, cold and estranged,
without love, without hope,"--I continued, unable to check the words
that came now as in a rushing tide,--"Oh! is it not dreadful, Ernest,
even to think of? There is no evil I could not bear while we loved one
another. If poverty came,--welcome, welcome. I could toil and smile, if
I only toiled for you, if I were only _trusted_, only _believed_. There
is no sacrifice I would not make to prove my faith. Do you demand my
right hand?--cut it off; my right eye?--pluck it out;--I withhold
nothing. I would even lay my heart bleeding at your feet in attestation
of my truth. But what can I do, when the idle breath of others, over
which I have no power, shakes the tottering fabric of your confidence,
and I am buried beneath the ruins?"

"You have never loved like me, Gabriella, or you would never dream of
the possibility of its being extinguished," said he, in a tone of
indescribable wretchedness. "I may alienate you from me, by the
indulgence of insane passions, by accusations repented as soon as
uttered,--I may revile and persecute,--but I can never cease to love
you."

"O Ernest!" It was all gone,--pride, anger, despair, were gone. The
first glance of returning love,--the first acknowledgment of uttered
wrong, were enough for me. I was in his arms, next to his heart, and the
last hours seemed a dream of darkness. I was happy again; but I trembled
even in the joy of reconciliation. I realized on what a slender thread
my wedded happiness was hanging, and knew that it must one day break.
Moments like these were like those green and glowing spots found on the
volcano