softening it into ethereal radiance and delicacy,
and when I strode forth from the house into the night
air heavy with the threatening gloom of coming tempest,
the picture of that fair face and form flitted before
me like a mirage—the glitter of her hair
flashed on my vision like little snakes of fire—her
lithe hands seemed to beckon me—her lips
had left a scorching heat on mine. Distracted
with the thoughts that tortured me, I walked on and
on for hours. The storm broke at last; the rain
poured in torrents, but heedless of wind and weather,
I wandered on like a forsaken fugitive. I seemed
to be the only human being left alive in a world of
wrath and darkness. The rush and roar of the
blast, the angry noise of waves breaking hurriedly
on the shore, the swirling showers that fell on my
defenseless head—all these things were unfelt,
unheard by me. There are times in a man’s
life when mere physical feeling grows numb under the
pressure of intense mental agony-when the indignant
soul, smarting with the experience of some vile injustice,
forgets for a little its narrow and poor house of
clay. Some such mood was upon me then, I suppose,
for in the very act of walking I was almost unconscious
of movement. An awful solitude seemed to encompass
me—a silence of my own creating. I
fancied that even the angry elements avoided me as
I passed; that there was nothing, nothing in all the
wide universe but myself and a dark brooding horror
called Vengeance. All suddenly, the mists of
my mind cleared; I moved no longer in a deaf, blind
stupor. A flash of lightning danced vividly before
my eyes, followed by a crashing peal of thunder, I
saw to what end of a wild journey I had come!
Those heavy gates—that undefined stretch
of land—those ghostly glimmers of motionless
white like spectral mile-stones emerging from the gloom—I
knew it all too well—it was the cemetery!
I looked through the iron palisades with the feverish
interest of one who watches the stage curtain rise
on the last scene of a tragedy. The lightning
sprung once more across the sky, and showed me for
a brief second the distant marble outline of the Romani
vault. There the drama began— where
would it end? Slowly, slowly there flitted into
my thoughts the face of my lost child—the
young, serious face as it had looked when the calm,
preternaturally wise smile of Death had rested upon
it; and then a curious feeling of pity possessed me—pity
that her little body should be lying stiffly out there,
not in the vault, but under the wet sod, in such a
relentless storm of rain. I wanted to take her
up from that cold couch—to carry her to
some home where there should be light and heat and
laughter—to warm her to life again within
my arms; and as my brain played with these foolish
fancies, slow hot tears forced themselves into my eyes
and scalded my cheeks as they fell. These tears
relieved me—gradually the tightly strung
tension of my nerves relaxed, and I recovered my usual
composure by degrees. Turning deliberately away
from the beckoning grave-stones, I walked back to
the city through the thick of the storm, this time
with an assured step and a knowledge of where I was
going. I did not reach my hotel till past midnight,
but this was not late for Naples, and the curiosity
of the fat French hall-porter was not so much excited
by the lateness of my arrival as by the disorder of
my apparel.