Recalling all this; reflecting that, had she approached him at an earlier period, she would have been driven back affrighted by the drunken clamour of his companions; and had she arrived at a later, would have found his palace in flames; thinking at the same time of her sudden presence in the banqueting-hall when he had believed her to be dead, when her appearance at the moment before he fired the pile was most irresistible in its supernatural influence over his actions--that vague feeling of superstitious dread which exists intuitively in all men's minds, which had never before been aroused in his, thrilled through him.

His eyes were fixed on the door by which she had departed, as if he expected her to return.

Her destiny seemed to be portentously mingled with his own; his life seemed to move, his death to wait at her bidding.

There was no repentance, no moral purification in the emotions which now suspended his bodily faculties in inaction; he was struck for the time with a mental paralysis.
The restless moments moved onward and onward, and still he delayed the consummation of the ruin which the night's debauch had begun.

Slowly the tender daylight grew and brightened in its beauty, warmed the cold prostrate bodies in the silent hall, and dimmed the faint glow of the wasting lamp; no black mist of smoke, no red glare of devouring fire arose to quench its fair lustre; no roar of flames interrupted the murmuring morning tranquillity of nature, or startled from their heavy repose the exhausted outcasts stretched upon the pavement of the street.