Say, if I marry Isabel, wilt thou be my master, my guide?
Say this, and I am resolved." "Never! It is only the lonely at heart, the restless, the desperate, that may be my pupils." "Then I renounce her! I renounce love, I renounce happiness.

Welcome solitude, welcome despair, if they are the entrances to thy dark and sublime secret." "I will not take thy answer now; at midnight thou shalt give it in one word,--ay, or no! Farewell till then!" The mystic waved his hand, and descending rapidly, was seen no more.
Glyndon rejoined his impatient and wondering friend; but Merton, gazing on his face, saw that a great change had passed there.

The flexile and dubious expression of youth was forever gone; the features were locked, rigid, and stern; and so faded was the natural bloom that an hour seemed to have done the work of years..