Still the night stayed. A weight of lead pressed on my brain and concentrated it to frantic power; the months in which I had known her, the only months I could call life, came back to me inch by inch, grain by grain. I recalled our first meeting,--the sudden springing into acquaintance,--the sympathetic power that had transfused those cold blue eyes into depths of tenderness and pity,--the gay and genial manner that aroused and charmed me,--the scornful lip that curled at the world for its worldliness,--that fresh imagination, which, like the spirit of frost, decked the commonest things with beauty; and I recalled those early letters that had passed between us,--mine, insipid enough,--hers, piquant, graphic, refined, tender, delicately passionate, sparkling, full of lofty thought and profound feeling. Good God! could she not have taken my heart, and wrung it, and thrown it away, under some more commonplace pretext than the profaned name of Friendship? Her friend! It is true I had called myself her friend; I had been strenuous in the nomenclature to quiet my own conscience,--to satisfy her conventional scruples; but had she no instinct to interpret the pretence? What friend ever lived on every look, studied every phrase, watched every action and expression, was so torn with jealousy and racked with doubt, bore so humbly with caprices, and forgave every offence so instantly and utterly,--nay, was scarce conscious that anything her soul entertained could be an offence, could be wrong? Friendship!--ah, that deity is calm and serene; that firm lip and pale cheek do not flush with apprehension or quiver with passion; that tranquil eye does not shine with anything but quiet tears. Rather call the dusky and dark-haired Twilight, whose pensive face is limned against the western hills, by the name of that fierce and fervid Noon that stands erect under the hot zenith, instinct with the red blood of a thousand summers, casting her glittering tresses abroad upon the south-wind, and holding in her hands the all-unfolded rose of life. And if I was only her friend, was that a reason why she should permit in me the thousand intimacies of look and caress that are the novitiate of love? Was it a friend's calm duty to give me her tiny hand to hold in mine, that I might fold and unfold the rosy fingers, and explore the white dimples that were its ornamenting gems,--to rest her tired head against my shoulder, even,--watching all day by the chair where pain, life-long ministrant, held me on the rack?--was it only friendly that she should press her soft little mouth to mine, and soothe me into quiet as a mother soothes her last, her dearest child? No! no! no! never could that be! She knew, she had known, that I loved her! Deliberate cruelty outlined those lovely lips; every statue-like moulding of that proud face told the hard and unrelenting nature of the soul within. God forgive her!--the exclamation escaped me unaware, and