nding-sheet
of those cold, unfathomable waters, than live to feel again the anguish
of being doubted by you."

"That is all past, my Gabriella,--all past. My nature is renewed and
purified. I feel within me new-born strength and power of resistance. By
the God of yon roaring cataract--"

"No,--no, Ernest, do not promise,--I dare not hear you, we are so weak,
and temptations are so strong."

"Do you distrust yourself, or me?"

"Both, Ernest. I never, never felt how poor and vain and frail we are,
till I stood, as now, in the presence of the power of the Almighty."

His countenance changed instantaneously. "To what temptations do you
allude?" he asked. "I can imagine none that could shake my fidelity to
you. My constancy is as firm as this rock. Those rushing waves could not
move it. Why do you check a vow which I dare to make in the very face of
Omnipotence?"

"I doubt not your faith or constancy, most beloved Ernest; I doubt not
my own. You know what I do fear,--misconstruction and suspicion. But let
us not speak, let us not think of the past. Let us look forward to the
future, with true and earnest spirits, praying God to help us in
weakness and error. Only think, Ernest, we have that within us more
mighty than that descending flood. These souls of ours will still live
in immortal youth, when that whelming tide ceases to roll, when the
firmament shrivels like a burning scroll. I never realized it so fully,
so grandly, as now. I shall carry from this rock something I did not
bring. I have received a baptism standing here, purer than fire, gentle
as dew, yet deep and pervading as ocean. I cannot describe what I mean,
but I feel it. Before I came, it seemed as if a great wall of adamant
rose between me and heaven; now there is nothing but this veil of mist."

As we turned to leave this region of blinding spray and mysterious
shadows, Ernest repeated, in his most melodious accents, a passage from
Schiller's magnificent poem of the diver.

"And it bubbles and seethes, and it hisses and roars,
As when fire is with water commixed and contending;
And the spray of its wrath to the welkin upsoars,
And flood upon flood hurries on, never ending.
And it never _will_ rest, nor from travail be free,
Like a sea, that is laboring the birth of a sea."

Never did I experience a more exultant emotion than when we emerged into
the clear air and glorious sunshine,--when I felt the soft, rich, green
gr