A moment more--a trembling effort, as if to read what were written to record my companionship for eternity--and a vague image of myself came out in shadow--clearer now, and still clearer, enlarging to the fullness of her mind. She thought wholly and only of that image I then saw, yet with a faint coloring playing to and from it, as influences came in from the outer world. Her eyes were turned in upon it in lost contemplation. But suddenly a new thought broke upon me. I saw my image, but it was not I, as I looked to myself. The type of my countenance was there; but, oh, transformed to an ideal, such as I now, for the first time, saw possible--ennobled in every defective line--purified of its taint from worldliness--inspired with high aspirations--cleared of what it had become cankered with, in its transmission through countless generations since first sent into the world, and restored to a likeness of the angel of whose illuminated lineaments it was first a copy. So thought Stephania of me. Thus did she believe I truly was. Oh! blessed, and yet humiliating, trust of woman! Oh! comparison of true and ideal, at which spirits must look out of heaven, and of which they must long, with aching pity, to make us thus rebukingly aware!
I felt myself withdrawing from Stephania's presence. There were tears between us, which I could not see. I strove to remain, but a stronger power than my will was at work within me. I felt my heart swell with a gasp, as if death were bearing out of it the principle of life; and my head dropped on the pillow of my bed.
"Good night, my son," said the low voice of Father Ludovic, "I have willed that you should remember what you have seen. Be worthy of her love, for there are few like her."
He closed the door, and as the glide of his sandals died away in the echoing cloisters, I leaned forth to spread my expanding heart in the upward and boundless light of the moon--for I seemed to wish never again to lose in the wasteful forgetfulness of sleep, the consciousness that I was loved by Stephania.
I was journeying the next day, alone, toward Venice. I had left written adieux for the party at Vallambrosa, pleading to my friends an unwillingness to bear the pain of a formal separation. Betwixt midnight and morning, however, I had written a parting letter for Stephania, which I had committed to the kind envoying of Father Ludovic, and thus it ran:--