that considering my age, and other connected circumstances at the time, I should have instinctively associated the word Isabel, found in the guitar, with my own abbreviated name, and so be led into all sorts of fancyings. They return upon me now. Do not speak to me.'
She leaned away from him, toward the occasionally illuminated casement, in the same manner as on the previous night; and for a few moments seemed struggling with some wild bewilderment. But now she suddenly turned, and fully confronted Pierre with all the wonderfulness of her most surprising face.
'I am called woman, and thou, man, Pierre; but there is neither man nor woman about it. Why should I not speak out to thee? There is no sex in our immaculateness. Pierre, the secret name in the guitar even now thrills me through and through. Pierre, think! think! Oh, canst thou not comprehend? see it?—what I mean, Pierre? The secret name in the guitar thrills me, thrills me, whirls me, whirls me; so secret, wholly hidden, yet constantly carried about in it; unseen, unsuspected, always vibrating to the hidden heart-strings—broken heart-strings; oh, my mother, my mother, my mother!'
As the wild plaints of Isabel pierced into his bosom's core, they carried with them the first inkling of the extraordinary conceit, so vaguely and shrinkingly hinted at in her till now entirely unintelligible words.
She lifted her dry burning eyes of long-fringed fire to him.
'Pierre—I have no slightest proof—but the guitar was hers, I know, I feel it was. Say, did I not last night tell thee, how it first sung to me upon the bed, and answered me, without my once touching it? and how it always sung to me and answered me, and soothed and loved me,—Hark now; thou shalt hear my mother's spirit.'
