“Lenore! I hear thee! I hear thy voice!” he whispered, to himself, fearfully. “I hear thee speaking to me.—Oh, my God! My God! When wilt Thou remove this torture from my brain?” He rose to his feet and lifted his arms as if in supplication. “It is a curse upon me! It is a madness, that I cannot love this other maiden. Thou spirit of my lost Lenore!—Lenore!—Lenore!—Thou callest to me from the sea by day and night!—Only and forever beloved, come thou back to me, out of the sea!—Come back to me!—Come back!” His hands were clenched under such a stress of emotion as his girl-wife had never dreamed him capable of. Now he stood there without speaking, his breath coming in sobbing gasps that shook his whole frame. The beating of his heart seemed as if it would suffocate him, and his body swayed back and forward, under the force of his mental anguish. For the first time in all his years of silent grief, he gave way unreservedly to himself; let all the pent-up agony come forth as it would from him, as he stood there, looking off upon that wonderful, inscrutable, shimmering ocean, that had played such havoc with his changeless heart. From the bed where she sat, Lenore watched him, silent, motionless, afraid almost to breathe lest he should discover that she was awake. But Gerault wist nothing of her presence. He had known no joy in her, in the hallowed hours of the early night; else he could not now stand there at the window, calling, in tones of unutterable agony and tenderness, upon his dead,— “Lenore! Lenore! Come back!—O sea—thou mighty, cruel sea, deliver her up for one moment to my arms! Let me have but one look, a touch, a kiss.—Oh, my God!—Come back to me at last, or else I die!” He fell to his knees again, faint with the power of his emotion; and Lenore, the other, the unloved Lenore, sat behind him, in the great bed, watching. The moonlight crept slowly from that room, and passed, like a wraith, off the sea, and beyond, into the east. The stars shone brighter for the passing of the moon. There was no sound in the great stillness, save the rustling murmur of the outflowing tide. In the chilly darkness before the break of dawn, Gerault of the Twilight Castle crept back to the bed he had left, looking fixedly, through the gloom, at the white, passive face of his wife, who lay back, with closed eyes, on her pillow. And when at last he slept again, she did not move; yet she was not asleep. In that hour her youth was passing from her, and she, a woman at last, entered alone into that dim and quiet vale where those that lived about her had wandered so long, so patiently, and, at last, so wearily, alone. [Illustration] _CHAPTER EIGHT_ TO A TRUMPET-CALL [Illustration]