If I could not prevent his self-torture, he should not, at least, torture me longer; and snatching the thing from his grasp, I exclaimed as I closed my hands over it, "Now, before I return it, you must, you _shall_, promise me that you will take the last advice I gave you; or will you allow me to look at it, and then unseal the silent lips and give you the prophetic little 'yes' or 'no' which a professed physiognomist like your confidante can always read in the eye?" "I would rather you did the last," he said; and I rose, leaned my elbow on the corner of the mantel nearest the gaslight, rested my head on my empty hand, so as to shade my eyes from the intensity of the brilliant burner near me, and with the awe creeping over me with which the old astrologers read the horoscope of the midnight stars, I looked, and saw--only a wonderfully faithful copy of the portrait hanging just over me, of which Mr. Tennent Tremont's confidante was the original. I threw it from me, and burst into tears. He stood quite near me. I thought I hated him, but my obtuse, blundering, idiotic self more than him. I waved my hand in token either of his silence or withdrawal, for in all my life long I, with a whole dictionary in my mind of abusive epithets, was never more at a loss for a word. My token was unheeded. He only murmured softly, I had never seen thee weeping: I cannot leave thee now. When you snatched my picture from me a moment ago I saw a glistening tear of sympathy in your eye; but what are these?" "So cruel! so ungenerous! so unfair!" I said, still pressing my hands tightly over my eyes. "How can I ever forgive you?" With softer murmur than the last he repeated the words, "'Tis sweet to let the pardoned in." "Astounding presumption that!" I said, now giving him the benefit of my full gaze--"to speak of pardon before making a confession of your guilt! But before I give you time even for that, the remaining mysteries which still hang around your tale of woe shall be cleared up. Please to inform the court how the original of your purloined sketch could have been the object of years of devotion, when it has been only four weeks to-day since you laid your mortal eyes on her?" "Ah! you may well say mortal; but you know the soul too has its visual organs. I saw and loved and worshiped my ideal in those years, and sought her too--how unceasingly!--and I said, Only for the real will I with the ideal part: Another shall not even tempt my heart. When I saw her just four weeks since, I knew her, And my heart responded as, with unseen wings, An angel touched its unswept strings, And whispers in its song, Where hast thou strayed so long?" But the avenging demon of curiosity was not to be exorcised by sentimental evasion: "Those letters, sir, of which you spoke, _they_ must have been of a real, tangible form--not a part of the mythical phantasmagoria of your idealistic vision."