I remained seated on one of the bags of Indian
corn at the foot of the bed, my hands clasped on my knees, and my eyes
fixed on the inanimate face and closed eyelids of the sufferer. Night
had closed in. One of the young girls had fastened the shutter, and
suspended a small copper lamp against the wall; its rays fell on the
sheets and on the sleeping countenance like the light of holy tapers on
a death-bed. Since then, I have thus watched, alas, by other bedsides,
but the sleepers never woke!
XII.
Never perhaps was the heart of man absorbed for so many long hours in
one strange and overwhelming speculation. Suspended between death and
love, I was unable to divine, as I gazed on the angel form that lay
sleeping before me, whether this night in its mystery would bring-forth
endless anguish, or whether undying love would come in the morning,
with returning life and joy. In the convulsive movements of her
troubled sleep she had thrown the sheet off one of her shoulders upon
which fell the long luxuriant curls of her lustrous hair.
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