"I too will turn wiser. My days are precious to me now. Vincenti, do you remember drawing my horoscope t'other day?" "Yes, I remember." "And I told you not to show it to me, d'ye remember? A foolish, nervous, brain-sick apprehension made me shrink from the knowledge of my fate. But now I think I should like to see the result of your calculations: not that I promise to believe implicitly." Vincenti's brow darkened. "I would rather not show you the horoscope," he answered curtly. "Why not?" Vincenti was silent. "And you had rather not tell me why not, I suppose?" said Lavendale, with a faint laugh. "No, there could be no good--I can scarce define my reasons." "Do you think I cannot guess them? The fate foretold was diabolically bad, and you would spare me the knowledge of evil." "There was nothing diabolical--nothing exceptionally bad--nothing--" "But the common lot of man," interrupted Lavendale--"death! Only the common lot; but for me it is to come earlier than to the lucky. It is to fall just when I am eager to live--just as the gates of paradise are opening to me. I am standing at the gate--I see that paradise beyond, with the sun shining on it, the sunlight of passionate, happy, satisfied love--for me the unsatisfied. I am so near, so near--'tis but one step across the threshold and I am in the enchanted garden. But there lurks the king of terrors--there stands Apollo with his fatal shaft: I am not to taste that ineffable bliss, the cup is to be snatched from my thirsting lips--that was what the stars foretold, was it not, Vincenti?" "'Tis your own eagerness shapes the fear that torments you." "Tell me that I have guessed wrong, that the stars promise long life." "I will tell you nothing." "Nay, you have told me enough. Your reticence is more significant than words," said Lavendale, rising and leaving the student hastily. He went no further than the adjoining room, the old Gothic library, faintly lit at this hour by a wood fire, which had burnt low and was almost expiring. He seated himself by that lonely hearth in silence and darkness; sat brooding there, a prey to a kind of angry despair. It was hard, it was hard, he told himself, a cruel sentence issued by the implacable Fates; hard and bitterly hard, now that his heart and mind were purified of all evil, now that he was free from sin, repentant of all his old follies, intent upon leading a good life and being of some use in his generation--hard, very hard, that the decree should go forth, "Thou shalt die in thy pride of life; thou shalt perish when thy heart is full of hope and love." The foreboding of evil was so strong upon him that he accepted the presage as it were a fiat that had gone forth. He struggled no longer against the despair, the conviction of doom. All was over. These brief hours of courtship, this blissful fever-dream was to be the end of all; and then must come the grave, to lie in cold obstruction, and to rot.