CHAPTER XVI.
Good night, good night,
The hour is nine;
With morn more light
Be yours and mine.
THESE words, sung by sweet voices, arouse me. Nearer they come. Veritée and Frederick are dismissing their visitors.
They returned from the beach, and have passed happy hours in song and dance, while I have beenwhere?
I enter the house with them.
They are separating for night-rest, when Veritée exclaims:
"Look at Leo! One would imagine he sees what we cannot—and something not pleasing to see."
Leoni is certainly gazing into my eyes with an expression of contempt and dread. Are we, then, in some respects deserving the contumely even of beasts? Does the animal really see me? What can it mean?
Is this, after all, no distant age? or is it the future of a higher world, into whose seas portions of our disrupted earth shall fall! Then, no wonder these young people find their lesson so distasteful.
What are worlds? ages? life? death?—Death! That word ought not to be. There can be no death. Light comes; but, oh, how dazzling! It is too bewildering for my imperfect mind.
My thoughts are flying in the whirling manner some of those hills and ravines we so lately passed over. Infinite powers! Whatever—— Oh, vain atom!
