SLOWLY restored to a perfect consciousness of his situation; to a recollection of the fatal avowal, by which he had irretrievably committed himself, and of the singular event which had produced it; the Missionary still lay motionless and silent; still lay supported by the Neophyte which love alone had given him. He dreaded a recovery from the partial suspension of all his higher faculties; he shrank from the obtrusive admonitions of reason and religion, and sought to perpetuate an apparent state of insensibility, which gave him up to the indulgence of a passive but gracious feeling, scarcely accompanied by any positive perception, and resembling, in its nature and influence, some confused but delightful dream, which, while it leaves its pleasurable impression on the senses, defies the accuracy of memory to recall or to arrange it. His heart now throbbed lightly, for it was disburdened of its fatal secret; his mind reposed from its conflicts, for it had passed the crisis of its weakness in betraying it: he felt the tears of love on his brow; he felt an affectionate hand returning the pressure of his; and a sense of a sacred communion, which identified the soul of another with his own, possessed itself of his whole being; and passion was purified by an intelligence which seemed to belong alone to mind. Alive to feelings more acute, to a sensibility more exquisite, than he had hitherto known; all external objects faded from his view for the moment; life was to him a series of ideas and feelings, of affections and emotions: he sought to retain no consciousness, but that of loving and being loved; and if he was absorbed in illusion, it was an illusion which, though reason condemned, innocence still ennobled and consecrated.

Luxima hung over him in silence, and her countenance was the reflection of all the various emotions which flitted over his. The repose which smoothed his brow, communicated to hers its mild and tranquil expression; her pulse quickened to the increasing throb of his temples; and the vital hues which revisited his cheek, rosed hers with the bright suffusion of love and hope. Fearing almost for his life, she bowed her head to catch the low-drawn respiration, and returned every breath of renovating existence with a sigh of increasing joy.

“Luxima!” said a voice, which, though low and tremulous, reached her inmost soul.

“I am here, father!” she replied in emotion, and bashfully withdrawing her arm from beneath a head which no longer needed support.

The Missionary took the hand thus withdrawn, and pressed it, for the first time, to his lips. The modest eyes of the vestal Priestess sank beneath the look which accompanied the tender act: it was the first look of love acknowledged and returned; it penetrated and mingled itself with the very existence of her to whom it was directed; it resembled, in its absorbing and delicious influence, the ecstacy of enthusiasm, which, in the days of her religious illusion, descended on her spirit to kindle and to entrance it; which had once formed the inspiration of the Prophetess, and animated beyond the charms of human beauty the loveliness of the woman. Turning away her glance in timid disorder, she sought for resource against herself in the objects which encompassed her: she threw up her eyes to that heaven, to whose exclusive love she had once devoted herself, and, from a sudden association of ideas, she turned them to the mouldering altar of the god whose service she had abandoned. The religion of her spirit and of her senses, of truth and error, alike returned with all their influence on her soul; and she shuddered as she looked on the shrine where she had once worshipped with a pure, pious, and undivided feeling: the moonlight fell in broken rays upon its shining fragments, and formed a strong relief to their lustre in the massive foliage of a dark tree which shaded it. The air was breathless, and the branches of this consecrated and gigantic tree alone were agitated; they waved with a slow but perceptible undulation; the fearful eyes of the apostate pursued their mysterious motion, which seemed influenced by no external cause: they bowed, they separated, and through their hitherto impervious darkness gleamed the vision of a human countenance! if human it might be called; which gave the perfect image of Brahma, as he is represented in the Avatar of “the Destroyer.” It vanished—the moon sank in clouds—the vision lasted but a moment; but that moment for ever decided the fate of the Priestess of Cashmire! Luxima saw no more—with a loud and piercing shriek she fell prostrate on the earth.

The Missionary started in horror and amazement; the form which now lay pale and lifeless at his feet, had, an instant before, by its animated beauty rivetted his eyes, absorbed his thoughts, and engrossed his exclusive attention, as half-averted, half-reposing in his arms, it had mingled in its expression and its attitude the tender confidence of innocence and love, the dignified reserve of modesty and virtue; still seeing no object but herself, he remained ignorant of the cause of her emotion, and was overwhelmed by its effects. He trembled with a selfish fondness for a life on which his happiness, his very existence, now depended: he raised her in his arms; he murmured on her ear words of peace and love. He threw back her long dark tresses, that the air might play freely on her face; and he only withdrew his anxious looks from the beauty of her pale and motionless countenance, to try if he could discover, in the surrounding scene, any cause for a transition of feeling so extraordinary; but nothing appeared which could change happiness into horror, which could tend to still the pulse of love in the throbbing heart, or bleach its crimson hue upon the glowing cheek. The moon had again risen in cloudless majesty, rendering the minutest blossom visible: the stillness of the air was so profound, that the faintest sigh was heard in dying echoes. All was boundless solitude and soothing silence. The mystery, therefore, of Luxima’s sudden distraction was unfathomable. She still lay motionless on the shoulder of the Missionary; but the convulsive starts, which at intervals shook her frame, the broken sighs which fluttered on her lips, betrayed the return of life and consciousness. “Luxima!” exclaimed the Missionary, pressing the cold hands he held; “Luxima, what means this heart-rending, this fearful emotion? Look at me! Speak to me! Let me again meet thine eye, and hang upon thy voice—fatal eye and fatal voice—my destruction and my felicity! still I woo and fear the return of their magic influence. Luxima, if Heaven forbids our communion in happiness, does it also deny us a sympathy in sorrow? Art thou to suffer alone? or rather, are my miseries to be doubled in my ignorance of thine? Oh! my beloved, if conscience speak in words of terror to thy soul, what has not mine to fear? It is I, I alone, who should be miserable in being weak. Created to feel, thou dost but fulfil thy destiny, and in thee nature contemns the false vow by which superstition bound thee to thy imaginary god. In thee it is no crime to love! in me, it is what I abhor no less than crime—it is sin, it is shame, it is weakness. It is I alone who should weep and tremble; it is I alone who have fallen, and whose misery and whose debasement demand pity and support. Speak to me then, my too well beloved disciple; solace me by words, for thy looks are terrific. O Luxima! give me back that soft sweet illusion, which thy voice of terror dissipated, or take from me its remembrance; give me up at once to reason and to remorse, or bid me, with one look of love, renounce both for ever at thy feet, and I will obey thee! I!—Redeemer of the World! hast thou then quite forsaken him whom thou didst die to save? Is the bearer of thy cross, is the minister of thy word, abandoned by his Saviour? Is he so steeped in misery and sin, that the spirit, which thy grace once enlightened, dares not lift itself to thee, and cry for mercy and salvation? Is the soul, which was tempted to error in its zeal for thy cause, to sink into the endless night prepared for the guilty? Woman! fiend! whatever thou art, who thus by the seeming ways of Heaven leadest me to perdition, leave me! fly me! loose thy fatal hold on my heart, while yet the guilty passions, which brood there, have made me criminal in thought alone.”

Luxima shuddered; she raised her drooping head from the bosom which recoiled from supporting her, and she fixed on the agitated countenance of the Monk a look, tender, and reproachful, even through the expression of horror and remorse, which darkened its softness and its lustre. This look had all its full effect; but Luxima shrunk back from the arms which again involuntarily extended to receive and to support her; and, in a solemn and expressive voice, she said, “It is all over!—ere that orb shall have performed its nightly course we shall be parted for ever!”

The Missionary was silent, but horror and consternation were in his looks.

Luxima threw round her a wild and timid glance; then creeping toward him, she said, in a low whispering voice, “Sawest thou nothing, some few minutes back, which froze thy blood, and harrowed up thy soul?”

“Nothing,” he replied, watching, in strong emotion, the sad wild expression of her countenance.

“That is strange,” she returned, with a deep sigh, “most strange!” Then, after a pause, she demanded, with a vacant look, “Where are we, father?”

“Luxima! Luxima!” he exclaimed, gazing on her in fear and in amazement, “what means this sudden, this terrific change? Merciful Heaven! does thy mind wander; or hast thou quite forgotten thine own consecrated shades, the ‘confluence of the streams,’ where first the Christian Missionary addressed the Priestess of Brahma? Hast thou forgotten the altar of thy once worshipped god?”

At these words, emphatically pronounced, to steady her wavering recollection, lightning from heaven seemed to fall upon the head of the apostate Priestess; her limbs were convulsed, her complexion grew livid, she threw her eyes wildly round her, and murmuring, in a low quick voice, a Brahminical invocation, she sprung forward with rapid bound, and fell prostrate before the shrine of her former idol. There the Christian dared not follow her: he arose, and advanced a few steps, and paused, and gazed; then, wringing his hands in agony, he said, “Happy in her illusion, she returns to her false gods for support and comfort, while I, debased and humbled, dare not raise my eyes and heart in supplications to the God of Truth.” As he spoke, he cast a look on the cross, which hung from his rosary; but it was still humid with tears, which love had shed, it still breathed the odours of the tresses the wind had wafted on its consecrated surface. He shuddered, and let it fall, and groaned, and covered his eyes with his robe, as if he sought to shut out the light of the Heaven he had offended. When again he raised his head, he perceived that Luxima was moving slowly towards him, not, as she had left him, in delirium, and in tears; but in all the dazzling lustre of some newly-awakened enthusiasm; resembling in her motions and her look the brilliant, the blooming, the inspired Prophetess, who had first disturbed his imagination and agitated his mind, in the groves of Lahore; extending her right hand to forbid his approach, she paused and leaned on the branch of a blasted tree, with all the awful majesty of one who believed herself fresh from a communion with a celestial being, and irradiated with the reflection of his glory. “Christian!” she said, after a long pause, “the crisis of human weakness is past, and the powers of the immortal spirit assert themselves:—Heaven has interposed to save its faithless servant, and she is prepared to obey its mandate: a divine hand has extended itself to snatch her from perdition, and she refuses not its aid. Christian! the hour of sacrifice is arrived—Farewell. Go! while yet thou mayest go, in innocence; while yet the arm of eternal destruction has not reached thee. O Christian! dangerous and fatal! while yet I have breath and power to bid thee depart, leave me! The light of the great Spirit has revisited my soul. Even now I am myself become a part of the Divinity.” As she spoke, her eyes were thrown up, and the whites only were visible; a slight convulsive smile gleamed across her features; and she passed her right hand from her bosom to her forehead with a slow movement. This mysterious act seemed to bestow upon her a new sense of existence[10]. Her religious ecstacy slowly subsided—her eyes fell—the colour revisited her cheek—she sighed profoundly, and after a silent pause, she said,

“Christian, thou hast witnessed my re-union to the source of my spiritual being. Oppose not thyself to the Heaven, which opens to receive me: depart from me; leave me now—and for ever.”

“Luxima,” interrupted the Missionary, in the low wild accent of terror and amazement; and perceiving that some delirium of religious fanaticism had seized her imagination—“Luxima, what means this wondrous resolution, this sudden change? Are all our powers alike reversed? Hast thou risen above humanity, or have I fallen below it? And art thou, the sole cause of all my weakness and my shame, to rise upon the ruin thou hast made, to triumph upon the destruction thou hast effected? Part with me now! abandon me in a moment such as this! O Luxima,” he added, with tenderness and passion, and in a voice soft and imploring, “am I deceived, or do you love me?”

Luxima replied not, but her whole countenance and form changed their expression: she no longer looked like an inspired sibyl, borne away by the illusions of her own disordered imagination, but like a tender and devoted woman. She advanced; she fell at his feet, and kissed with humility and passion the hem of his robe; but when he would have raised her in his arms, she recoiled from his support, and seating herself on a bank, at a little distance from him, she wept. He approached, and stood near her: he saw in the rapid transitions of her manner, and her conduct, the violent struggles of feeling and opinion, the ceaseless conflicts of love and superstition; he saw imaged in her emotions the contending passions which shook him to dissolution. He sighed heavily, and mentally exclaimed,

“Alas! her virtue derives more strength even from error, than mine from truth: she obeys her ideas of right as a Brahmin; I, as a Christian, violate and forsake mine.” He turned his eyes on Luxima, and perceived that she was now gazing with a look of exquisite fondness on him, tempered with something of melancholy and sadness.

“It is hard,” said she, “to look on thee, and yet to part with thee! but who will dare to disobey the mandate of a God, who comes in his own presence to save and to redeem us?”

“What mean you, Luxima?” interrupted the Missionary, in emotion, and throwing himself beside her.

“Hear me,” she returned; “believe, and obey.—From the moment I first beheld thee, first listened to thee, I have ceased to be myself; thy looks, thy words, encompassed me on every side; it seemed as if my soul had anticipated its future fate, and already fled to accomplish it in thee. I felt that, in ceasing to be near thee, I should cease to exist: therefore I concealed from thee the danger which hung upon our interviews, and all that might lead thee, for thine own sake or for mine, to withdraw from me the heaven of thy presence—but the dream is over! the God whom thou didst teach me to abandon, has this night appeared on earth to reclaim his apostate.”

“Luxima! Luxima!”

“Hear me, father! If I live, this night the vision of Brahma, the God whom I forsook, appeared to me amidst the ruins of his own neglected altar!”

“Impossible! impossible!” exclaimed the Missionary vehemently.

“Then,” she returned, in a voice which resembled the heart-piercing accent of melancholy madness, “then there lives some human testimony of our interview, and thou art lost! thou, my soul’s own idol! Oh! then, fly—for ever fly: let me feel death and shame but once, and not a thousand, thousand times through thy destruction. But, no,” she added in a calmer tone; “it was no human form I saw; I have oft before met that awful vision in my dream of inspiration! haply it came to warn me of thy danger, and to save my life through thine—then go, leave me while yet I have power to say—leave me!”

The Missionary heard her in uncontrolled emotion; but without any faith in a fancied event, which he deemed but the vision of her own disordered imagination, influenced by the agitation of her feelings, by the hour, the scene, and by the fanaticism and superstitious horrors which still governed her vacillating mind: but he saw that there was evidently, at that moment, an obstinacy in her illusion, a bigotry in her faith, it would be vain to attempt to dissipate or to vanquish, until a calmer mood of thought and feeling should succeed to their present tumultuous and unsettled state. Less surprised at the nature of her vision, than at the peculiar result of its influence, he could not comprehend the miracle by which she submitted to an eternal separation, at a moment when his mind, broken and enervated, sunk under the tyranny of a passion which had just reached its acmÉ. But he knew love only as a man, and could not comprehend its nature in the heart of a woman:—with him the existing moment was every thing, but her affection took eternity itself into its compass; and though she could have more easily parted with her life than with her lover, yet she did not hesitate to sacrifice her felicity to his safety, to his glory, and to the hope of that eternal reunion which might await two souls, which crime had not yet degraded; for her tolerant, but zealous, religion, shut not the gates of Heaven against all who sought it by a different path; and consecrating a human feeling, in ascribing to it an immortal duration, love itself enabled her to make the sacrifice religion demanded. The Missionary sought not to subdue the influence of that wild and fervid imagination, which now, he believed, held the ascendant; but he sought to combat the resolution it had given birth to—and gazing on a countenance, where the enthusiasm of religion still mingled with the expressions of tenderness and passion, he said,

“Wondrous and powerful being! equally fatal in thy weakness and thy force, in thy seducing softness, and resisting virtue: wilt thou now, thus suddenly, thus unprepared, abandon me? now, that thou hast trampled on my religion and my vows; now, that thou hast conquered my habits of feeling, my principles of thinking, subdued every faculty of my being to thy influence, and bereft me of all, save that long latent power of loving passionately—that tyrannic and dreadful capability of an exclusive devotion to a creature frail and perishable as myself, by which thou hast effected my ruin, and changed the very constitution of my nature?”

“Oh, no!” returned Luxima, endeavouring to conceal her tenderness and her tears; “oh, no! Part we cannot. Go where thou mayest, my life must still hang upon thine! my thoughts will pursue thee. Indissolubly united, there is now but one soul between us. But, O father! to preserve that soul pure and untainted—the human intercourse, that dear and fatal symbol of our eternal union, ought, and can, no longer exist; the voice of God and the law of man, alike oppose it: let us not further provoke the wrath of both, let us remember our respective vows, and immolate ourselves to their performance.” She arose as she spoke. The tears stood trembling in her inflamed eyes, and that deadly sickness of the soul which ushers in the moment of separation from all the heart holds dearest, spread its livid hues over her cheek, its agony of expression over her countenance.

“Woman! woman!” exclaimed the Missionary, wildly, and seizing her trembling hands, “give me back my peace, or remain to solace me for its loss; give me back to the Heaven from which you have torn me, or stay, stay, and teach me to forget the virtue by which I earned its protection. While yet a dreadful remembrance of my former self remains, you dare not leave me to horror and remorse! You dare not, cold, or cruel, or faithless, as you may be, you dare not say, ‘This moment is our last.’ O Luxima! Luxima!”—Overcome by a sense of his weakness, he drooped his head upon her hands, and wept. Had not the salvation of his life been the purchase of her firmness and her resistance, Luxima would have granted to the tears of love, what its ardour or its eloquence could now have obtained: but she knew the danger of remaining longer, or of again meeting him in a place, where they had either been discovered by the jealous guardians of her rigid order, or from which they had been warned by a divine intimation. Mingling her tears with his, after an affecting pause, she said, in a low voice, and scarcely articulate from contending emotions,

“To-morrow, then, we shall again meet, when the sun sets behind the mountains: but not here—not here! Oh, no! These shades have become fearful and full of danger to my imagination. But if thou wilt repair to the western arcades of the great banyan-tree, then——” The words died away on her trembling lips, and she cast round a wild and timid look, as if some minister of Heaven’s mercy was near to forbid an appointment, which might be, perhaps, pregnant with destruction to both.

“And then,” repeated the Missionary, with vehemence and with firmness, “we meet to part for ever!—or—to part no more!”

Luxima, at these words, turned her eyes on him, with a look of love, passionate and despairing—then, folding her hands upon her bosom, she raised those eloquent eyes to Heaven, with a glance of sweet and holy resignation to its will. This seraph look of suffering and piety operated like a spell upon the frantic feelings of her lover. The arms, extended to detain her, fell back nerveless on his breast. He saw her move slowly away, resembling the pensive spirit of some innocent sufferer, whom sorrow had released from the bondage of painful existence. He saw her light and perfect form, faintly tinged with the moon-ray, slowly fading into distance, till it seemed to mingle with the fleecy vapours of the night: then he felt as if she had disappeared from his eyes for ever, and, turning to her image in his heart, he gave himself up to suffering and to thought, to the alternate influence of passion and remorse.