unremorsefulness as regards the beloved absent objects is presumed, how much more intolerable, when the knowledge of their hopeless wretchedness occurs, attended by the visitations of before latent upbraidings in the rmemberer as having been any way—even unwillingly—the producers of their sufferings. There seems no other sane recourse for some moody organisations on whom such things, under such circumstances intrude, but right and left to flee them, whatever betide.
If little or nothing hitherto has been said of Lucy Tartan in reference to the condition of Pierre after his departure from the Meadows, it has only been because her image did not willingly occupy his soul. He had striven his utmost to banish it thence; and only once—on receiving the tidings of Glen's renewed attentions—did he remit the intensity of those strivings, or rather feel them, as impotent in him in that hour of his manifold and overwhelming prostration.
Not that the pale form of Lucy, swooning on her snow-white bed; not that the inexpressible anguish of the shriek—'My heart! my heart!' would not now at times force themselves upon him, and cause his whole being to thrill with a nameless horror and terror. But the very thrillingness of the phantom made him to shun it, with all remaining might of his spirit.
Nor were there wanting still other, and far more wonderful, though but dimly conscious influences in the breast of Pierre, to meet as repellants the imploring form. Not to speak of his being devoured by the all-exacting theme of his book, there were sinister preoccupations in him of a still subtler and more fearful sort, of which some inklings have already been given.
It was while seated solitary in his room one morning; his flagging faculties seeking a momentary respite; his head sideways turned toward the naked floor, following
