When the countess was alone, she fell upon her knees, as though utterly crushed. "Thus outraged Virtue revenges herself! Artful hypocrite that she is! When I left her, she gave me no warning,--I sinned unpunished,--and now, when I would return to her repentant, she thrusts me from her with a remorseless 'Too late!' Too late!--my ships are burned behind me, and there is nothing left for me but to advance, or to repent,--Repent?" She writhed in despair. "No! O Heaven, take pity on me,--I am still too young and too fair for that!" CHAPTER VII. EMANCIPATION OF THE SPIRIT. High up upon the platform of her observatory, fanned by the pure night-breeze and bathed in starry radiance, stood Ernestine, waiting for the moon to rise. On her serious brow and in her maidenly soul there was self-consecration, and peace. The heated vapour of passion that was gathering like a thunder-cloud about her name in the world beneath her, the poisonous slander of lips that mentioned her only to defame her, could not ascend hither. Unconscious, assailed by no sordid temptations, she stood there in vestal purity,--elevated physically but a few feet from the earth, but soaring in mind worlds above it. Slowly and solemnly the moon's disc arose from the horizon and mounted upwards, lonely and quiet, in soft splendour. Thousands of little moons were reflected in the telescopes of astronomers in thousandfold diversity of aspect; but they were all images of the one orb slowly sailing through the air. Ernestine was not busied with her telescope, for no mortal quest could aid her in what she was seeking to-night. It was to be found only in her own breast. It was not the material, but the immaterial, that she was now longing to grasp; no single sense could be of any avail. She needed all the powers of her being harmoniously co-operating. And, as she gazed there, full of dreamy inspiration, it was as if the moon had paused in its course to mirror itself in those eyes. Oh that we could die when and as we choose! that we could breathe out our souls in a single sigh! No human being could pass away more calmly and blissfully than Ernestine could have done at that moment, as she gazed at that serene moon and breathed forth a yearning sigh after the Unfathomable.