and Isabel was calling.
Was Jenny losing her power in this intoxicating fragrance of Isabel's words--as though for once the cross should lose its virtue in some subtle air of hellish sweetness?
O lilies from Jenny's white coffin, O little chrysanthemum that lay in her bosom, O violets from Jenny's tomb, pierce with your faithful breath this cloud of incense that is enwrapping Jenny's lover.
Alas! the power of the dead is but the power of the ideal, at once the strongest and the weakest force in the world,--a power, indeed, that prevails, but which may in some moments be shattered by the frailest whisper of the real.
Isabel was calling, and Theophil was mad to go.

Come back he might, but go he must, he would.

Yes! he was going.
There was only one possible way of spending that fevered night--in the train; and it was in the train, speeding on to London and to Isabel, his heart on fire, his eager eyes wasting themselves on the flying darkness, that Theophil spent it.

Purposes he had none, only a desire,--just to see Isabel again.

That immediate future was too effulgent for him to think of anything beyond it.
He would see Isabel again! From a distant starry name, withdrawn into the abysses of heaven, she would turn again to woman and a wonderful nearness.
The thought of being once again in a little room together enveloped him in a cloud of sweetness, as though the train were passing through hidden orchards.
Isabel! Isabel! don't you hear love's wings beating towards you across the night?
Have you not just awakened suddenly from your first sleep in the rosebush where you lie, and said: "Surely out there across the silent woods and meadows, where the night swallows London like a camp-fire, a train, a moving street of lighted windows, is speeding through the darkness and the dew, and in one of those little travelling rooms sits Theophil with his eyes fixed on me"?
Was it Jenny's name that Theophil was thus taking to Isabel?
No, not Jenny's name.