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One moment! It passes ere the pen can write the letters, and yet ages
of Thought may come and go, within its compass.

One moment!

It may be, only the last pebble which tops the pyramid, or the pivot on
which a world spins round.

“Go forth,” she faltered, “But not in anger.”

She touched his hand, and clasped his fingers with an almost imperceptible
pressure.

Paul's face was no longer wild and distorted; it was subdued by a
vague melancholy, but his heart beat tumultuously, and he was forced to
lean for support against the frame of the secret door.

A breathless pause ensued, while she stood near him, her face in shadow,
while her hand gently touched his own.

The door was free. Beyond was the darkness and silence of night;
here Paradise, made beautiful by Eve.

Paul lingered—

Where was the anger, which had swelled his heart, and quivered in
burning accents from his tongue?

She raised her face, and looked at him silently through the intervals of her
dark hair; her lips moved as if in the effort to speak, but without a sound;
and then she stretched forth her arms, and sank upon his breast.

“To night,” she murmured, as she buried her face upon his bosom.
“To-night I am to be married Paul.”

Her breast was throbbing against his heart; her arms were round his
neck, her hair waved over his arms and shoulders. It was as though
liquid fire had been poured into his veins. He gathered her form to his
breast with one arm, and closed the secret door with the other. The
mirror in its place once more, reflected her head pillowed on his breast;
his face, glowing with the fire and quivering with the tumult of a sudden
rapture.

“Married!” he echoed, and—looking over her shoulder, he saw the
white couch, among its snowy curtains, and knew at once that he beheld
the Bridal Bed.

He was lost in a tumult of conflicting emotions; he was mad with
boundless joy.

“Thou wilt be my wife!” he gasped, “Thou so young and beautiful,
wilt take the nameless wanderer to thy arms!”

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The dim luxurious light of that silent chamber, the pictures glowing
from the walls, the statues gleaming from each shadowy recess, the music
bursting in merry peals, through the window, the Bridal Bed, enshrined
in twilight, all these conspired to inflame his senses, but the Woman who
clung to his neck, and suffered her bosom to beat against his breast, completed
his delirium.

“My wife!” he cried, “For me these marriage guests, for me these
peals of marriage music, for me this silent room, made sacred by the Marriage
Bed! It is too much—my brain is mad. For me the wanderer
without a name, the outcast without one rood of land, with no heritage
but Poverty and Despair.”

And then the Thought came over his soul, that this beautiful woman
had discovered his real Name; had found the clue to the title and the
wealth of his race, and planned this scene as a merry surprise, for him—
her Husband.

“Speak! Tell me the secret of this mystery with thy lips ripe with
passion. Tell it to me with thine eyes. Nay be silent. Do not speak,
or I shall grow mad indeed. Thy heart beating against mine own, speaks
a language which needs no words to be understood.”

She gently unwound her arms from his neck, and removed his hand
from her waist, and stood before him, radiant, glowing—with all her loveliness
about her like a veil

“I love you Paul,” she whispered—in a measured voice, with a pause
between each word—and took his hand: “Never can I love any one but
you. We will love each other until we are dead. In all the world, there
is no man, whose destiny is linked with mine, but you. We will climb
the heighths of fame and power together. I will be near you, when darkness
clouds your soul. I will cheer you in the moment of Despair.
When there is no resting-place for you, in all the world, my bosom shall
pillow your head. But Paul, I am to be married to-night, but not to
you.”

It seemed to him, that he was cursed with sudden blindness. The
room, the lights, the Marriage Bed, and the voluptuous form, all were lost
in thick darkness. His brain swam; he heard sounds like the ringing of
death bells in his ears; he was at once blind, mad and dumb.

“I am to be married to-night, but not to you!”

These words he heard; they sounded again, and again; they mingled
with the tolling of the death-bells.

There was a long pause, ere he saw clearly again, and found himself
still in the room, the Marriage Bed before him, and the beautiful woman
by his side.

“Pity me!” he faltered—“I am in a dream. Soon I will awake, and find
myself beside the Wissahikon, with the moonlight on my face. Yet it is
a fearful dream. If I do not soon awake I will die.”

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Rising to her full stature, she swept her dark hair aside, and revealed
her face,—unutterably beautiful—but calm and pale as Death.

“It is no dream, Paul. It is real, terribly real. To-night I am to be
married. Married to Wealth, joined in solemn vows, uttered in the presence
of Heaven, to Gold. The history is intricate and long, but I will
speak it Paul, in few words. A Rich man has my father in his power;
all this wealth which you behold, is hollow and fantastic as the gold of
the Arabian legend; it shines brightly, but turns to withered leaves, before
your eyes. This mansion, adorned with all the externals of wealth,
these lands by the Wissahikon, nay the very liberty of my father, are
shut up in the Rich Man's coffers,—coffined and frozen in the charnel
house of `Law.' My body, Paul, is to be sold to-night, in the solemn
auction of Marriage; sold by the Priest, to pay the debt of my father,
and secure his gray hairs from the ignominy of the jail. The Rich Man,
the creditor of my father will purchase me,—yes, buy my body—but the
Soul, Paul, the Soul! That at least cannot be bought; it is free, as air
or Death!”

Paul did not answer. As the first man in Eden, suddenly awoke from
his dream of innocence, and found himself naked and was ashamed, so
Paul Ardenheim, started up from his wild dreams, and found himself—
Poor.

Poor! The Woman whom he worshipped—for whom he would
have bartered his Soul—was to be sold, into the arms of sanctified lust,
for the price of some thousands of round and bright and beautiful doubloons.
Could he save her! Could he redeem her body from this unholy
traffic? He could not call one piece of gold his own. He was Poor.

The agonies of the damned, are sometimes written in those three
syllables—“I am poor.”

“Come,” he muttered, as the room swam round him, and the death-bells
sounded in his ears—“We will leave this place. Some cabin by a
hill-side, will give us shelter. Our souls are rich, what need we care for
the Gold that pampers the body and damns the Soul?”

His eye was vague and wandering; his accents broken and faint; he
spoke like a man half roused from some horrible dream.

“Love in a cottage!” she whispered, while her face was radiant with
that laughter of scorn, which gave a Satanic lustre to its beauty. “No,
Paul. We are not mad enough for that. Wouldst like to gaze upon the
face of a Child, and feel that thou hadst given it being, with the curse of
Poverty upon its brow? The Leper of old, had no right to love or marry;
the Leprosy which poisoned his blood, he might bear in the silence of
despair; it was a sin darker than Parricide, to communicate that Plague
to the veins of a Child. Which is most fearful Paul, the Leprosy which
corrodes the blood, or the Poverty which transforms body and soul, into
one hideous ulcer?”

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Paul was still silent, but the blindness had passed away; his eyes shone
clear and deep again; his Soul was possessed by a fixed and irrevocable
Resolve

“To night I am to be married, Paul. Hark! How the marriage music
peals through the window! The Priest will say his Prayer, or rather,
repeat the words which make the sale complete. The guests will throng
around the Bride, and while the Rich Man, contemplates his Purchase,
they will prepare Her, for the consecrated orgies of the Marriage Couch.
This is all fair; is it not? Legal, too, aye and Religious? When a Man
buys a thing, and gives his gold for it, he has a right to use it as he pleases—
has he not? But hold—” she grasped his hand, and looked into his
eyes: “Suppose the thing that is sold, has a Soul—a Will. Suppose the
Woman bought with Gold, meets her Buyer on the threshold of the Bridal
Chamber, and taught by his own `Golden Rule,' whispers in his ear—
`You have purchased the body, Husband by law, but Another has married
the Soul. Soul and body, are not to be separated: I am fearful, Husband
by law, that you cannot enjoy the one, without the possession of the
other. You have bought the body with your gold; Husband by law, that
gold is now your Curse. For with that gold, I will raise the Husband of
my soul, to rank and power; aye with your gold, I will unloose the prison
bars of Poverty, and let Genius spread its wings, and seek the Sun.
Do not murmur, Husband by Law; before the world, I will be, your Wife.
I will submit to be surveyed, by the noble and the rich, as your Purchase.
But the threshold of this chamber, you may never pass; while there is a
throb in my veins, or a Soul in my bosom you shall never mount that
Bridal Bed—Husband by law!”'

“He will be base enough, to hear this, and obey?” murmured Paul,
while his Resolve gave a terrible light to his eye, an unnatural glow to his
cheek.

“The man who buys a woman with his gold, and is content, with love
that is only purchased, is base enough, cowardly enough, for anything.
And then Paul, do I look like a Woman, who will be foiled by a creature,
like this? When I look into your eyes, Paul, I feel that you are the Master
of my Soul. And shall I, armed with this consciousness, falter and
turn pale, at the cunning or the gold of the Husband by Law?”

Paul did not answer her in words, but his gaze, spoke the purpose of
his soul. She was before him, in all her transcendant loveliness, a bold
and fearless soul embodied in a voluptuous shape. His bronzed cheek
was growing with a crimson flush; his eyes deep and clear and yet flashing
as with liquid light, devoured at a glance the witchcraft of her face, the
warm palpable beauty of her virgin form. He extended his arms,—he
drew her to his breast. And girdled in that arm, with all her life, throbbing
in her bosom, and throbbing against his breast, she felt his touch, as

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his hand gently parted her tresses, over her forehead, she felt his gaze,—
burning, passionate, mad—as his lips clung to her own.

And their broken sighs—the low murmur of their love, half-drowned by
their mingling lips were lost in the Marriage Music, which still pealed
gaily through the curtained window.

And the mirror reflected their forms,—her robes like the driven snow
floating about his dark attire—and their faces, both impassioned by the
same glow, her eyes kindling with the fire of his gaze, her hair, streaming
over the arm, which held her to his breast.

“Thou art mine,” he gasped, “And now. Behold our Bridal Bed.”

And ere the words had died on his tongue, ere the kiss which answered
him, had sealed her full assent upon his lips, the mirror glided silently
aside, and two forms entered the apartment, with noiseless footsteps.

Reginald of Lyndulfe, gay and magnificent in his wedding attire, with
the pale face of Rolof Sener, smiling coldly over his shoulder.

“Leola!” cried the voice of Reginald.

“Save me! Reginald save me!” cried the beautiful woman, springing
from the arms of Paul—“Save me from this villian!”

And Paul turned and saw her clinging to the neck of Reginald, her face,
stamped with terror—aye with hatred—turned toward him, while the pale
visage of Rolof Sener, smiled coldly at his side.