“Amid this scene stood two beings, one whose appealing loveliness seemed to have found favour with the elements even in their wrath, and one whose fearless and obdurate eye appeared to defy them. “Immalee,” he cried, “is this a place or an hour to talk of love!--all nature is appalled--heaven is dark--the animals have hid themselves--and the very shrubs, as they wave and shrink, seem alive with terror.”--“It is an hour to implore protection,” said the Indian, clinging to him timidly. “Look up,” said the stranger, while his own fixed and fearless eye seemed to return flash for flash to the baffled and insulted elements; “Look up, and if you cannot resist the impulses of your heart, let me at least point out a fitter object for them. Love,” he cried, extending his arm towards the dim and troubled sky, “love the storm in its might of destruction--seek alliance with those swift and perilous travellers of the groaning air,--the meteor that rends, and the thunder that shakes it! Court, for sheltering tenderness, those masses of dense and rolling cloud,--the baseless mountains of heaven! Woo the kisses of the fiery lightnings, to quench themselves on your smouldering bosom! Seek all that is terrible in nature for your companions and your lover!--woo them to burn and blast you--perish in their fierce embrace, and you will be happier, far happier, than if you lived in mine! _Lived!_--Oh who can be mine and live! Hear me, Immalee!” he cried, while he held her hands locked in his--while his eyes, rivetted on her, sent forth a light of intolerable lustre--while a new feeling of indefinite enthusiasm seemed for a moment to thrill his whole frame, and new-modulate the tone of his nature; “Hear me! If you will be mine, it must be amid a scene like this for ever--amid fire and darkness--amid hatred and despair--amid----” and his voice swelling to a demoniac shriek of rage and horror, and his arms extended, as if to grapple with the fearful objects of some imaginary struggle, he was rushing from the arch under which they stood, lost in the picture which his guilt and despair had drawn, and whose images he was for ever doomed to behold.