Drawing a knife, he sustained her, as she was sinking to the ground, and aimed it at her bosom. In the action and in the look and attitude of each, the painter beheld the figures of his sketch. The picture, with all its tremendous coloring, was finished. “Hold, madman!” cried he, sternly. He had advanced from the door, and interposed himself between the wretched beings, with the same sense of power to regulate their destiny, as to alter a scene upon the canvas. He stood like a magician, controlling the phantoms which he had evoked. “What!” muttered Walter Ludlow, as he relapsed from fierce excitement into silent gloom. “Does Fate impede its own decree?” “Wretched lady!” said the painter. “Did I not warn you?” “You did,” replied Elinor, calmly, as her terror gave place to the quiet grief which it had disturbed. “But--I loved him!” Is there not a deep moral in the tale? Could the result of one, or all our deeds, be shadowed forth and set before us, some would call it Fate, and hurry onward, others be swept along by their passionate desires, and none be turned aside by the PROPHETIC PICTURES. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Prophetic Pictures (From “Twice Told Tales”), by Nathaniel Hawthorne