"You have decided?"
"I have; and now my reward."
"Thy reward! Well; ere this hour to-morrow it shall await thee."
Zanoni gave the rein to his horse; it sprang forward with a bound; the sparks flew from its hoofs, and horse and rider disappeared amidst the shadows of the street whence they had emerged.
Mervale was surprised to see his friend by his side, a minute after they had parted.
"What has passed between you and Zanoni?"
"Mervale, do not ask me to-night! I am in a dream."
"I do not wonder at it, for even I am in a sleep. Let us push on."
In the retirement of his chamber, Glyndon sought to recollect his thoughts. He sat down on the foot of his bed, and pressed his hands tightly to his throbbing temples. The events of the last few hours; the apparition of the gigantic and shadowy Companion of the Mystic, amidst the fires and clouds of Vesuvius; the strange encounter with Zanoni himself, on a spot in which he could never, by ordinary reasoning, have calculated on finding Glyndon, filled his mind with emotions, in which terror and awe the least prevailed. A fire, the train of which had been long laid, was lighted at his heart — the asbestos-fire, that, once lit, is never to be quenched. All his early aspirations — his young ambition, his longings for the laurel — were merged in one passionate yearning to overpass the bounds of the common knowledge of man, and reach that solemn spot,
