heeding her, and stamping till the reverberation of his steps on the hollow and loosened stones almost contended with the thunder; “hate me, for I hate you—I hate all things that live—all things that are dead—I am myself hated and hateful!”—“Not by me,” said the poor Indian, feeling, through the blindness of her tears, for his averted hand. “Yes, by you, if you knew whose I am, and whom I serve.” Immalee aroused her newly-excited energies of heart and intellect to answer this appeal. “Who you are, I know not—but I am yours.—Whom you serve, I know not—but him will I serve—I will be yours for ever. Forsake me if you will, but when I am dead, come back to this isle, and say to yourself, The roses have bloomed and faded—the streams have flowed and been dried up—the rocks have been removed from their places—and the lights of heaven have altered in their courses,—but there was one who never changed, and she is not here!”

“As she spoke the enthusiasm of passion struggling with grief, she added, “You have told me you possess the happy art of writing thought.—Do not write one thought on my grave, for one word traced by your hand would revive me. Do not weep, for one tear would make me live again, perhaps to draw a tear from you.”—“Immalee!” said the stranger. The Indian looked up, and, with a mingled feeling of grief, amazement, and compunction, beheld him shed tears. The next moment he dashed them away with the hand of despair; and, grinding his teeth, burst into that wild shriek of bitter and convulsive laughter that announces the object of its derision is ourselves.

“Immalee, whose feelings were almost exhausted, trembled in silence at his feet. “Hear me, wretched girl!” he cried in tones that seemed alternately tremulous with malignity and compassion, with habitual hostility and involuntary softness; “hear me! I know the secret sentiment you struggle with better than the innocent heart of which it is the inmate knows it. Suppress, banish, destroy it. Crush it as you would a young reptile before its growth had made it loathsome to the eye, and poisonous to existence!”—“I never crushed even a reptile in my life,” answered Immalee, unconscious that this matter-of-fact answer was equally applicable in another sense. “You love, then,” said the stranger; “but,” after a long and ominous pause, “do you know whom it is you love?”—“You!” said the Indian, with that purity of truth that consecrates the impulse it yields to, and would blush more for the sophistications of art than the confidence of nature; “you! You have taught me to think, to feel, and to weep.”—“And you love me for this?” said her companion, with an expression half irony, half commiseration. 

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