wn bring a fresher bloom to the cheek,
and partly, because the careless negligence and the graceful postures
exclusively appropriated to youth, are forbidden by custom and formality
through the day, and developing themselves unconsciously in sleep, they
strike the eye like the ease and freedom of childhood itself. There,
as I looked upon Isora's tranquil and most youthful beauty, over which
circled and breathed an ineffable innocence,--even as the finer and
subtler air, which was imagined by those dreamy bards who kindled the
soft creations of naiad and of nymph, to float around a goddess,--I
could not believe that aught evil awaited one for whom infancy itself
seemed to linger,--linger as if no elder shape and less delicate hue
were meet to be the garment of so much guilelessness and tenderness of
heart. I felt, indeed, while I bent over her, and her regular and quiet
breath came upon my cheek, that feeling which is exactly the reverse to
a presentiment of ill. I felt as if, secure in her own purity, she
had nothing to dread, so that even the pang of parting was lost in the
confidence which stole over me as I then gazed.

I rose gently, went to the next room, and dressed myself; I heard my
horse neighing beneath, as the servant walked him lazily to and fro.
I re-entered the bed-chamber in order to take leave of Isora; she was
already up. "What!" said I, "it is but three minutes since I left you
asleep, and I stole away as time does when with you."

"Ah!" said Isora, smiling and blushing too, "but for my part, I think
there is an instinct to know, even if all the senses were shut up,
whether the one we love is with us or not. The moment you left me, I
felt it at once, even in sleep, and I woke. But you will not, no, you
will not leave me yet!"

I think I see Isora now, as she stood by the window which she had
opened, with a woman's minute anxiety, to survey even the aspect of the
clouds, and beseech caution against the treachery of the skies. I think
I see her now, as she stood the moment after I had torn myself from her
embrace, and had looked back, as I reached the door, for one parting
glance,--her eyes all tenderness, her lips parted, and quivering with
the attempt to smile, the long, glossy ringlets (through whose raven
hue the _purpureum lumen_ broke like an imprisoned sunbeam) straying in
dishevelled beauty over her transparent neck; the throat bent in mute
despondency; the head drooping; the arms half extended