I will not attempt to describe the effect of these expressions. A cold dew crept over my body, and I felt as if a paralysis had struck my senses. Yet at the same moment, and while she was speaking so quietly and deliberately, and uttering words, under the heavy weight of which the fabric I had reared in my imagination crumbled down, and fell with a crash that smote my brain--a crowd of memories came upon me--isolated words and gestures, the dark allusions of the dwarf, and the warnings of Astræa herself--a crowd of things that were all dark before were now lighted up. As the stream of electricity flies along the chain, traversing link after link and mile after mile, with a rapidity that baffles calculation, so my thoughts flashed over every incident of the past. I now understood it all--the mystery that lay buried in Astræa's words and abstractions--the vacant heart--the hope that looked out from her eyes, and then fled back to be quenched in silent despair--her yearnings for solitude and repose--the devotional spirit that, blighted in the world, and condemned to be shut out from seeking happiness in social conventions, had fallen back upon its own lonely strength, and made to itself a faith of passion! It was all plain to me now. But there were explanations yet to come. "Astræa!" I cried, hoarsely, and I felt the echoes of the name moaning through the trees. "Astræa! What is the meaning of these dreadful words? Have you not pledged your faith to me?" "Irrevocably!" she returned. "Then what new impediment has arisen to our union?" "None that has not existed all along. Have you not seen it darkening every hour of our intercourse? Have you not understood it in the fear that has given such intensity to feelings which, had all been open before us, would have been calm and unperturbed?--that has imparted to love, otherwise sweet and tranquil, the wild ardor of obstructed passion? Your instincts must have told you, had you allowed yourself a moment of reflection, that the woman who consents to immolate her pride, her delicacy, her fame, for the man she loves, must be fettered by ties which leave her no alternative between him and the world. Why am I here alone with you?"