"Come back to your country, your mother, and Edith. I do not bid you come back to me, for it seems that the distance that separates us is too immeasurable to be overcome. I remember telling you, when the midnight moon was shining upon us in the solitude of our chamber, that I saw as in a vision a frightful abyss opening between us, and I stood on one icy brink and you on the other, and I saw you receding further and further from me, and my arms vainly sought to reach over the cold chasm, and my own voice came back to me in mournful echoes. That vision is realized. Our hearts can never again meet till that gulf is closed, and confidence firm as a rock makes a bridge for our souls. "I have loved you as man never should be loved, and that love can never pass away. But from the deathlike trance in which you left me, my spirit has risen with holier views of life and its duties. An union, so desolated by storms of passion as ours has been, must be sinful and unhallowed in the sight of God. It has been severed by the hand of violence, and never, with my consent, will be renewed, unless we can make a new covenant, to which the bow of heaven's peace shall be an everlasting sign; till passion shall be exalted by esteem, love sustained by confidence, and religion pure and undefiled be the sovereign principle of our lives." CHAPTER LIV. The Tombs!--shall I ever forget my first visit to that dismal abode of crime, woe, and despair?--never! I had nerved myself for the trial, and went with the spirit of a martyr, though with blanched cheek and faltering step, into the heart of that frowning pile, on which I could never gaze without shuddering. Clinging to the arm of Richard, I felt myself borne along through cold and dreary walls, that seemed to my startled ear echoing with sighs and groans and curses, upward through dark galleries, and passed ponderous iron doors that reminded me of Milton's description of the gates of hell, till the prison officer who preceded us paused before one of those grim portals, and inserting a massy key, a heavy grating sound scraped and lacerated my ear. "Wait one moment," I gasped, leaning almost powerless on the shoulder of Richard. "I feared so," said he, passing his arm around me, his eyes expressing the most intense sensibility. "I knew you could not bear it. Let us return,--I was wrong to permit your coming in the first place." "No, no,--I am able to go in now,--the shock is over,--I am quite strong now." And raising my head, I drew a quick, painful breath, passed through the iron door into the narrow cell, where the gloom of eternal twilight darkly hung.