- end_line
- 1710
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:52.918Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1658
- text
- thought,--never will I wed with my best Pierre, until the riddle of that
face be known. Tell me, tell me, Pierre;--as a fixed basilisk, with eyes
of steady, flaming mournfulness, that face this instant fastens me."
"Bewitched! bewitched!--Cursed be the hour I acted on the thought, that
Love hath no reserves. Never should I have told thee the story of that
face, Lucy. I have bared myself too much to thee. Oh, never should Love
know all!"
"Knows not all, then loves not all, Pierre. Never shalt thou so say
again;--and Pierre, listen to me. Now,--now, in this inexplicable
trepidation that I feel, I do conjure thee, that thou wilt ever continue
to do as thou hast done; so that I may ever continue to know all that
agitatest thee, the airiest and most transient thought, that ever shall
sweep into thee from the wide atmosphere of all things that hem
mortality. Did I doubt thee here;--could I ever think, that thy heart
hath yet one private nook or corner from me;--fatal disenchanting day
for me, my Pierre, would that be. I tell thee, Pierre--and 'tis Love's
own self that now speaks through me--only in unbounded confidence and
interchangings of all subtlest secrets, can Love possibly endure. Love's
self is a secret, and so feeds on secrets, Pierre. Did I only know of
thee, what the whole common world may know--what then were Pierre to
me?--Thou must be wholly a disclosed secret to me; Love is vain and
proud; and when I walk the streets, and meet thy friends, I must still
be laughing and hugging to myself the thought,--They know him not;--I
only know my Pierre;--none else beneath the circuit of yon sun. Then,
swear to me, dear Pierre, that thou wilt never keep a secret from
me--no, never, never;--swear!"
"Something seizes me. Thy inexplicable tears, falling, falling on my
heart, have now turned it to a stone. I feel icy cold and hard; I will
not swear!"
"Pierre! Pierre!"
"God help thee, and God help me, Lucy. I can not think, that in this
most mild and dulcet air, the invisible agencies are plotting treasons
against our loves. Oh! if ye be now nigh us, ye things I have no name
for; then by a name that should be efficacious--by Christ's holy name, I
warn ye back from her and me. Touch her not, ye airy devils; hence to
your appointed hell! why come ye prowling in these heavenly perlieus?
Can not the chains of Love omnipotent bind ye, fiends?"
"Is this Pierre? His eyes glare fearfully; now I see layer on layer
deeper in him; he turns round and menaces the air and talks to it, as if
defied by the air. Woe is me, that fairy love should raise this evil
spell!--Pierre?"
"But now I was infinite distances from thee, oh my Lucy, wandering
baffled in the choking night; but thy voice might find me, though I had
wandered to the Boreal realm, Lucy. Here I sit down by thee; I catch a
soothing from thee."
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