“No!” said the Dwarf, rising and interposing between her and the door, and motioning to her sternly to resume her seat--“No! you leave me not in this way; we must have farther conference. Why should one being desire aid of another? Why should not each be sufficient to itself? Look round you--I, the most despised and most decrepit on Nature’s common, have required sympathy and help from no one. These stones are of my own piling; these utensils I framed with my own hands; and with this”--and he laid his hand with a fierce smile on the long dagger which he always wore beneath his garment, and unsheathed it so far that the blade glimmered clear in the fire-light--“with this,” he pursued, as he thrust the weapon back into the scabbard, “I can, if necessary, defend the vital spark enclosed in this poor trunk, against the fairest and strongest that shall threaten me with injury.” It was with difficulty Isabella refrained from screaming out aloud; but she DID refrain. “This,” continued the Recluse, “is the life of nature, solitary, self-sufficing, and independent. The wolf calls not the wolf to aid him in forming his den; and the vulture invites not another to assist her in striking down her prey.” “And when they are unable to procure themselves support,” said Isabella, judiciously thinking that he would be most accessible to argument couched in his own metaphorical style, “what then is to befall them?” “Let them starve, die, and be forgotten; it is the common lot of humanity.” “It is the lot of the wild tribes of nature,” said Isabella, “but chiefly of those who are destined to support themselves by rapine, which brooks no partner; but it is not the law of nature in general; even the lower orders have confederacies for mutual defence. But mankind--the race would perish did they cease to aid each other.--From the time that the mother binds the child’s head, till the moment that some kind assistant wipes the death-damp from the brow of the dying, we cannot exist without mutual help. All, therefore, that need aid, have right to ask it of their fellow-mortals; no one who has the power of granting can refuse it without guilt.” “And in this simple hope, poor maiden,” said the Solitary, “thou hast come into the desert, to seek one whose wish it were that the league thou hast spoken of were broken for ever, and that, in very truth, the whole race should perish? Wert thou not frightened?” “Misery,” said Isabella, firmly, “is superior to fear.” “Hast thou not heard it said in thy mortal world, that I have leagued myself with other powers, deformed to the eye and malevolent to the human race as myself? Hast thou not heard this--And dost thou seek my cell at midnight?” “The Being I worship supports me against such idle fears,” said Isabella; but the increasing agitation of her bosom belied the affected courage which her words expressed.