Yet was she woman, and pined away
daily. In time the crimson spot settled steadily upon the cheek, and
the blue veins upon the pale forehead became prominent; and one
instant my nature melted into pity, but in, next I met the glance of
her meaning eyes, and then my soul sickened and became giddy with
the giddiness of one who gazes downward into some dreary and
unfathomable abyss.
Shall I then say that I longed with an earnest and consuming
desire for the moment of Morella's decease? I did; but the fragile
spirit clung to its tenement of clay for many days, for many weeks and
irksome months, until my tortured nerves obtained the mastery over
my mind, and I grew furious through delay, and, with the heart of a
fiend, cursed the days and the hours and the bitter moments, which
seemed to lengthen and lengthen as her gentle life declined, like
shadows in the dying of the day.
But one autumnal evening, when the winds lay still in heaven,
Morella called me to her bedside. There was a dim mist over all the
earth, and a warm glow upon the waters, and amid the rich October
leaves of the forest, a rainbow from the firmament had surely fallen.
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