A pause. My eyes stray away to the mountains. Pilatus on the right, with his jagged peak and slender snow-chains about his harsh neck; hill after hill rising silent, eternal, like guardian spirits standing hand in hand around their child, the lake. As I look, suddenly they have all flushed, as at some noblest thought, and over all their sullen faces streams an ineffable rosy joy--a solemn and wonderful effulgence, such as Israel saw reflected from the features of the Eternal in their prophet’s transfigured eyes. The unutterable peace and stainless beauty of earth and sky seem to lie softly on my soul. “Would God I could stay! Would God all life could be like this!” I say, devoutly, and the aspiration has the reverent earnestness of a prayer. “Why do you say, ‘_Would God!_’” she cries, passionately, “when it lies with yourself? Oh my dear love,” gently sliding her hand through my arm, and lifting wetly-beseeching eyes to my face, “I do not know why I insist upon it so much--I cannot tell you myself--I daresay I seem selfish and unreasonable--but I feel as if your going now would be the end of all things--as if----.” She breaks off suddenly. “My child,” say I, thoroughly distressed, but still determined to have my own way, “you talk as if I were going for ever and a day; in a week, at the outside, I shall be back, and then you will thank me for the very thing for which you now think me so hard and disobliging.” “Shall I?” she answers, mournfully. “Well, I hope so.” “You will not be alone, either; you will have Morris.” “Yes.” “And every day you will write me a long letter, telling me every single thing that you do, say, and think.” “Yes.” She answers me gently and obediently; but I can see that she is still utterly unreconciled to the idea of my absence. “What is it that you are afraid of?” I ask, becoming rather irritated. “What do you suppose will happen to you?” She does not answer; only a large tear falls on my hand, which she hastily wipes away with her pocket handkerchief, as if afraid of exciting my wrath. “Can you give me any good reason why I _should_ stay?” I ask, dictatorially. “None--none--only--stay--stay!” But I am resolved _not_ to stay. Early the next morning I set off. CHAPTER V.