"Slowly her dear head fell down upon her trembling hands, and, kneeling at my feet, she waited my acceptance or rejection of the noblest gift that ever one immortal spirit made unto another. Lilias, I told you when I commenced this agonizing record, that there were portions of it which I would breathe to no mortal ears, not even to yours, good and gentle as you are. And now, of such is all that followed in the solemn, blessed hours of which I speak; you know what my answer was; it can not be that you doubt it--could it have been otherwise, indeed? She had said truly, that the deed was done--the sacrifice was made--the life was given. What would it have availed if I, by my rejection, had punished her unparalleled devotion with unexampled misery? and for myself, could I--could I--should I have been human if I, who, till that hour, had believed myself of all men most accursed on earth--had suddenly refused to be above all men blest?
"When the sun went down that night, sinking into the sea, whose boundlessness seemed narrow to my infinity of joy, Aletheia lay at my feet like a cradled child; and as I bent down over her, and scarcely dared to touch, with deep respect, the long, soft tresses of her waving hair, which the light breeze lifted to my lips, I heard her ever murmuring, as though she could never weary of that sound of joy--'Mine own, mine own forever.'
"The period which followed that wonderful hour was one of an Eden-like happiness, such as, I believe, this fallen world never could before have witnessed--it was the embodiment, in every hour and instant, of that blessing of which my Aletheia had so fervently spoken--the spiritual union which linked us in heart and soul alone, was as perfect as it was unearthly; and the intense bliss which flowed from it, on both of us, could only have been equaled by the love, no less intense, that made us what we were.
"But, Lilias, of this brief dream of deep delight I will not and I can not speak. This is a record of misery and not of joy," he continued, turning round upon her almost fiercely. "It becomes not me, who have been the murderer of Aletheia's joyous life, to take so much as the name of happiness between my lips. It passed--it departed--that joy, as a spirit departs out of the body; unseen, unheard; you know not it is gone, till suddenly you see that the beautiful living form has become a stark and ghastly corpse!--and so, in like manner, our life became a hideous thing....