The wind having blown open the door, I got up to shut it. Winifred rose too, and again taking hold of my hand, she looked up into my face with a smile, and said, 'Don't go; I'm so lonely--poor Winnie's so lonely.'
As I held her hand in mine, and closed my other hand over it, I murmured to myself, 'If God will only give her to me like this--mad like this--I will be content.'
'Dearest,' I said, longing to put my arm round her waist--to kiss her own passionless lips--but I dared not, lest I might frighten her away, 'I will not leave you. I will never leave you. You shall never be lonely any more.'
I closed the door, and we resumed our seats.
Can I put into words what passed within my soul as we two sat by the fire, she holding my hand in her own--holding it as innocently as a child holds the hand of its mother? Can I put into words my mingled feelings of love and pity and wild grief, as I sat looking at her and murmuring, 'Yes; if God will only give her to me like _this_, I will be content'?
'Prince,' said she, 'your eyes look very kind!--Sweet, sweet eyes,' she continued, looking at me. 'The Prince of the Mist has love-eyes,' she repeated, as she placed the seats before the fire again.
Then I heard her murmur, 'Love-eyes! love-eyes! Henry's love-eyes!' Then a terrible change came over her. She sprang up and came and peered in my face. An indescribable expression of terror overspread her features, her nostrils expanded, her lips were drawn tightly over her teeth, her eyes seemed starting from their sockets; her throat suddenly became fluted like the throat of an aged woman, then veined with knotted, cruel cords. Then she stood as transfixed, and her face was mimicking that appalling look on her father's face which I had seen in the moonlight. With a yell of 'Father!' she leapt from me. Then she rushed from the house, and I could hear her run by the window, crying, 'Cursed, cursed, cursed by Henry's father!'
For an instant the movement took away my breath; but I soon recovered and sprang after her to the door.
There, in the distance, I saw her in the rain, running along the road. My first impulse was to follow her and run her down. But luckily I considered the effect this might have in increasing her terror, and stopped. She was soon out of sight. I wandered about the road calling her name, and calling on Heaven to have a little pity--a little mercy.