that do not differ from those of an innocent,
quiet child! The soul has a long road to travel--from time through
eternity. It demands its halting hours of contemplation. Contemplation
is serene. But with such wants of an immortal immaterial spirit,
Margrave had no fellowship, no sympathy; and for myself, I need scarcely
add that the lines I have just traced I should not have written at the
date at which my narrative has now arrived.

CHAPTER XLIX.

I had no case that necessitated my return to L---- the following day.
The earlier hours of the forenoon I devoted to Strahan and his building
plans. Margrave flitted in and out of the room fitfully as an April
sunbeam, sometimes flinging himself on a sofa, and reading for a few
minutes one of the volumes of the ancient mystics, in which Sir Philip's
library was so rich. I remember it was a volume of Proclus. He read that
crabbed and difficult Greek with a fluency that surprised me. "I picked
up the ancient Greek," said he, "years ago, in learning the modern."
But the book soon tired him; then he would come and disturb us, archly
enjoying Strahan's peevishness at interruption; then he would throw open
the window and leap down, chanting one of his wild savage airs; and
in another moment he was half hid under the drooping boughs of a broad
lime-tree, amidst the antlers of deer that gathered fondly round him.
In the afternoon my host was called away to attend some visitors of
importance, and I found myself on the sward before the house, right in
view of the mausoleum and alone with Margrave.

I turned my eyes from that dumb House of Death wherein rested the corpse
of the last lord of the soil, so strangely murdered, with a strong
desire to speak out to Margrave the doubts respecting himself that
tortured me. But--setting aside the promise to the contrary, which I had
given, or dreamed I had given, to the Luminous Shadow--to fulfil that
desire would have been impossible,--impossible to any one gazing on that
radiant youthful face! I think I see him now as I saw him then: a white
doe, that even my presence could not scare away from him, clung lovingly
to his side, looking up at him with her soft eyes. He stood there like
the incarnate principle of mythological sensuous life. I have before
applied to him that illustration; let the repetition be pardoned.
Impossible, I repeat it, to say to that creature, face to face, "Art
thou the master of demoniac arts, and the instigator