Why did I stand trembling and irresolute, as if I had no right to penetrate that lonely apartment? He was my husband, and a wife's agonized solicitude had drawn me to him. If he repulsed me, I could but turn away and weep;--and was not my pillow wet with nightly tears? Softly I turned the key, and the door opened, as if touched by invisible hands. He did not hear me,--I know he did not,--for he sat at the upper end of the room, on a window seat, leaning back against the drapery of the curtain that fell darkly behind him. His face was turned towards the window, through whose parted damask the starry night looked in. But though his face was partially turned from me, I could see its contour and its hue as distinctly as those of the marble busts that surrounded him. He looked scarcely less hueless and cold, and his hand, that lay embedded in his dark wavy hair, gleamed white and transparent as alabaster. I stood just within the door, with suspended breath and wildly palpitating heart, praying for courage to break the spell that bound me to the spot. All my strength was gone. I felt myself a guilty intruder in that scene of self-humiliation, penance, and prayer. Though reason condemned his conduct, and mourned over his infatuation, the holiness of his purpose shone around him and sanctified him from ridicule and contempt. There was something pure, spiritual, almost unearthly in his countenance; but suffering and languor cast a shadow over it, that appealed to human sympathy. If he would only move, only turn towards me! The Israelites, at the foot of the cloud-girdled mount, whose fiery zone they were forbidden to pass, could scarcely have felt more awe and dread than I did, strange and weak as it may seem. I moved nearer, still more near, till my shadow fell upon him. Then he started and rose to his feet, and looked upon me, like one suddenly awakened from a deep sleep. "Gabriella!" he exclaimed. Oh! I cannot describe the inexpressible softness, tenderness, and music of his accent. It was as if the whole heart were melting into that single word. All my preconceived resolutions vanished, all coldness, alienation, and constraint. "I had found him whom my soul loved." My arms were twined around him,--I was clasped to his bosom with the most passionate emotion, and the hearts so violently wrenched asunder once more throbbed against each other. "Ernest, beloved Ernest!" "Temptress, sorceress!" he suddenly exclaimed, pushing me from him with frenzied gesture,--"you have come to destroy my soul,--I have broken my solemn vow,--I have incurred the vengeance of Almighty God. Peace was flowing over me like a river, but now all the waves and billows of passion are gone over me. I sink,--I perish, and you, you,--Gabriella, it is you who plunge me in the black abyss of perjury and guilt." I was terrified at the dark despair that settled on his brow. I feared his reason was forsaking him, and that I, in my rashness, had accelerated his doom.