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WE were unspeakably happy
in that dream which follows
the confessions of two hearts
each all in all to the other.
Our formal engagement was
but delayed until Captain
Roylstone, who was making
an East Indian voyage,
should return and sanction it. The future
lay before us like a map on which each bright
tint melts into one more brilliant. We were
wildly happy; but not long.

The occult power that moulds my thought,
speaks my words, and even times the pulsations of

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my heart, glided in between us. We had been engaged
but three weeks, when I became assured
that Cecil had taken a sudden aversion to me. It
was evident she sought to avoid our usual interviews;
and when we met, was constrained and
absent-minded. The color, what little she had,
shrunk from her cheek; the touch of her fingers
was chilly and nerveless. When I questioned
Cecil, she looked at me wearily, and turned away.
Sometimes with an impatient gesture, sometimes
coldly.

One night — I never hear the monotonous wash
of the waves, but I think of it, — we sat on the
rocks. Cecil wrapt in her shawl. It was October,
and the winds were growing frosty. One
star, in a stormy cincture, struggled through the
dark. The sea moaned, as it moans only in
autumn. The clouds leaned down, hungry, tragic
faces, listening. The landscape seemed cut in
granite, sharp and gray. No color anywhere.
There was something of an expression of human

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

despair in the half twilight that brooded over it.
It was so hopeless.

Presently the moon rose to the surface of the
water, like a drowned body, bleached and swollen.
It distressed me; and when, at length, it lifted its
full disc slowly up among the clouds, I felt a
sense of relief: the cool clean light revived my
spirits, like a draught of wine. I began speaking,
rapidly, half to myself, partly to Cecil. I forget
the train of reflection that led to it, but, at last, I
touched on the invention of the Moon-Apparatus,
to which I had recently given so much study.

Then Cecil, who had been sitting silent and
motionless, abruptly bent forward, and took my
face between her hands.

“Poor Paul!”

She drew back, then, one hand resting on her
lap, inanimate, like a sculptured hand I had seen
somewhere.

“Cecil!”

She turned away hastily.

“You are cruel, Cecil.”

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“No. Do not say that. I—I suffer.”

And she uttered a low moan, like a child.

“Suffer?”

“Bitterly!”

“You are hiding some painful news from me.
What is it?”

Cecil made no reply for a moment: then I
heard her murmuring to herself,

“It was an evil day when we met. I wish it
had never been.”

“An evil day, Cecil? You kill me with your
strangeness. Your very breath seems to freeze
me.”

“Let it! I think I am dying—it is so sudden
and terrible—but you do not understand me—
poor Paul!”

“What is sudden and terrible?'

“Nothing.”

My fingers sunk into her arm until she gave a
quick cry of pain.

“Why do you call me `poor Paul?' ”

“I—I cannot tell.”

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“For mercy's sake, Cecil, say one word that
has sense in it—if you have any love left for me.”

Cecil threw her arms around my neck, and
locked her fingers, holding me so.

“How you tremble, child! What has happened
to trouble you? Something, I know—
your father? You have had letters from him,
and he is sick? Tell me, little wife.”

“No, no, no!” cried Cecil, recoiling.

For an instant the indistinct blemish on her lip
glowed warmly, like an opal, and faded.

“No, no, no?” I repeated to myself. “How
strange!”

Then the three monosyllables slipped from my
mind, and, oddly enough, I commenced a mental
construction of the Moon-Apparatus, forgetful
of Cecil and our limited world of sorrows.

“The powerful glasses,” said I half aloud,
“shall draw the rays of the moon into the copper
cylinders: the action of the chemicals, let in
through the valves will congeal the atomic matter

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then comes the granulating process; and after the
calcina—”

“Merciful heaven!” cried Cecil, breaking in
on me, “is it so? I have waited, and hoped,
and prayed. Paul, look at me; take me in your
arms, once, and kiss me. Look at me long!
Never any more! Poor, poor Paul. O misery!
that I should so love a—”

With this, Cecil tore herself away from me,
and, in spite of my cries, fled toward the town.
She melted into the moonlight, past the churchyard,
and was gone. What could it mean?

Then the terrible truth flashed upon me—
Cecil had lost her mind!

p448-040

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