'Die, yes!' answered Elinor, with a smile triumphant though ghastly; 'or sleep! call it which you will! so animation be over, so feeling be past, so my soul no longer linger under the leaden oppression of disappointment; under sickness of all mortal existence; under incurable, universal disgust:--call it what you please, sleep, rest, or death; termination is all I seek.' 'And is there, Elinor, no other name for what follows our earthly dissolution?' cried Harleigh, with a shuddering frown. 'What say you if we call it immortality?' 'Will you preach to me?' cried she, her eyes darting fire; 'will you bid me look forward to yet another life, when this, short as it is deemed, I find insupportable? Ah, Harleigh! Harleigh!' her eyes suffusing with sudden tenderness; 'were I your's--I might wish indeed to be immortal!' Harleigh was extremely affected: he approached her, took her hand, and soothingly said, 'My dear Elinor, compose your spirits, exert your strength of mind, and suffer us to discuss these subjects at some length.' 'No, Harleigh; I must not trust myself to your fascinations! How do I know but they might bewitch me out of my reason, and entangle me, again, in those antique superstitions which make misery so cowardly? No, Harleigh! the star of Ellis has prevailed, and I sink beneath its influence. Else, only sometimes to see you, to hear of you, to watch you, and to think of you always, I would still live, nay, feel joy in life; for still my imagination would gift you, ultimately, with sensibility to my regard. But I anticipate the union which I see to be inevitable, and I spare my senses the shock which I feel would demolish them.--Harleigh!--dearest Harleigh, Adieu!' A paleness like that of death overspread her face. 'What is it,' cried Harleigh, inexpressibly alarmed, 'what is it Elinor means?' 'To re-conquer, by the courage of my death, the esteem I may leave forfeited by my jealousy, my envy, my littleness in life! You only could have corrected my errours; you, by your ascendance over my feelings, might have refined them into virtues. Oh, Harleigh! weigh not alone my imperfections when you recollect my attachment! but remember that I have loved you so as woman never loved!' Her voice now faultered, and she shook so violently that she could not support herself. She put her hand gently upon the arm of Harleigh, and, gliding nearly behind him, leant upon his shoulder. He would have spoken words of comfort, but she seemed incapable of hearing him. 'Farewell!' she cried, 'Harleigh! Never will I live to see Ellis your's!--Farewell!--a long farewell!' Precipitately she then opened the shagreen case, and was drawing out its contents, when Ellis, darting forward, caught her arm, and screamed, rather than articulated, 'Ellis will never be his!--Forbear! Forbear!--Ellis never will be his!'