ing on its feet raised up on high in the midst of
the scarlet drapery. She then stept safely and firmly down from the
couch, walkt a few paces up to Antonio who had drawn back, and with a
childish exclamation of surprise, as when children are suddenly
gladdened by a new plaything, she laid her hand upon his shoulder,
smiled lovelily upon him, and cried with a soft voice: "Antonio!"

But he, pierced through and through with fear and horrour and joy and
amazement and the deepest pity, knew not whether to fly from her, to
embrace her, to cast himself at her feet, or to melt away in tears and
die. That was the selfsame sound which of yore he had heard so often
and with such delight, at which his whole heart had turned round.

"Thou livest?" he cried with a voice which the swell of his feelings
stifled.

The sweet smile that had mounted from her pale lips over her cheeks
even into her radiant eyes, suddenly split, and froze into a stiff
expression of the deepest most unutterable woe.

Antonio could not endure the glance of those eyes; he covered his face
with his hands, and shriekt: "Art thou a ghost?"

The figure came still closer, prest down his arms with her hands, so
that his face lay bare, and said with a gently fluttering voice: "No,
look at me; I am not dead; and yet I live not. Give me that cup
there."

A fragrant liquid was floating in the crystal vessel; he held it out
to her trembling; she set it to her mouth and sipt the drink by slow
draughts. "Alas! my poor Antonio!" she then said: "I will only borrow
these earthly powers that I may disclose the most monstrous of crimes
to thee, that I may beseech thy aid, that I may prevail on thee to
help me to that rest after which all my feelings so fervently yearn."

She had sunk back into the arm-chair, and Antonio was sitting at her
feet. "Hellish arts," she again began, "have seemingly awakened me
from death. The same man whom my inexperienced youth honoured as an
apostle, is a spirit of darkness. He gave me this shadow of life. He
loves me, as he says. How my heart shrank back from him when my
awakening eye beheld him. I sleep, I breathe; I may, if I choose, be
restored to life altogether, so that wicked man has promist me, if I
will give myself up to him with my whole heart, if in secret
concealment I will let him become my husband.... O Antonio, how hard
is every word to me, every thought! All his art crumbles before my
longing for death. It was frightful, wh