Perhaps an involuntary sentiment of terror mingled itself with
that expression, as this beautiful being sunk on her knees before her
writhing and distracted enemy; and, by the silent supplication of her
attitude, seemed to implore him to have mercy on himself. As the
lightnings flashed around her,--as the earth trembled beneath her white
and slender feet,--as the elements seemed all sworn to the destruction
of every living thing, and marched on from heaven to the accomplishment
of their purpose, with _Væ victis_ written and legible to every eye, in
the broad unfolded banners of that resplendent and sulphurous light that
seemed to display the _day of hell_--the feelings of the devoted Indian
seemed concentrated on the ill-chosen object of their idolatry alone. Her graduating attitudes beautifully, but painfully, expressed the
submission of a female heart devoted to its object, to his frailties,
his passions, and his very crimes. When subdued by the image of power,
which the mind of man exercises over that of woman, that impulse becomes
irresistibly humiliating. Immalee had at first bowed to conciliate her
beloved, and her spirit had taught her frame that first inclination. In
her next stage of suffering, she had sunk on her knees, and, remaining
at a distance from him, she had trusted to this state of prostration to
produce that effect on his heart which those who love always hope
_compassion_ may produce,--that illegitimate child of love, often more
cherished than its parent. In her last efforts she clung to his
hand--she pressed her pale lips to it, and was about to utter a few
words--her voice failed her, but her fast dropping tears _spoke_ to the
hand which she held,--and its grasp, which for a moment convulsively
returned hers, and then flung it away, answered her. “The Indian remained prostrate and aghast. “Immalee,” said the stranger,
in a struggling voice, “Do you wish me to tell you the feelings with
which my presence should inspire you?”--“No--no--no!” said the Indian,
applying her white and delicate hands to her ears, and then clasping
them on her bosom; “I feel them too much.”--“Hate me--curse me!” said
the stranger, not 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. “Think, Immalee, for a moment, how unsuitable, how unworthy, is the
object of the feelings you lavish on him. A being unattractive in his
form, repulsive in his habits, separated from life and humanity by a
gulph impassable; a disinherited child of nature, who goes about to
curse or to tempt his more prosperous brethren; one who----what
withholds me from disclosing all?”

“At this moment a flash of such vivid and terrific brightness as no
human sight could sustain, gleamed through the ruins, pouring through
every fissure instant and intolerable light. Immalee, overcome by terror
and emotion, remained on her knees, her hands closely clasped over her
aching eyes. “For a few moments that she remained thus, she thought she heard other
sounds near her, and that the stranger was answering a voice that spoke
to him. She heard him say, as the thunder rolled to a distance, “This
hour is mine, not thine--begone, and trouble me not.” When she looked up
again, all trace of human emotion was gone from his expression. The dry
and burning eye of despair that he fixed on her, seemed never to have
owned a tear; the hand with which he grasped her, seemed never to have
felt the flow of blood, or the throb of a pulse; amid the intense and
increasing heat of an atmosphere that appeared on fire, its touch was as
cold as that of the dead. “Mercy!” cried the trembling Indian, as she in vain endeavoured to read
a human feeling in those eyes of stone, to which her own tearful and
appealing ones were uplifted--“mercy!” And while she uttered the word,
she knew not what she deprecated or dreaded. “The stranger answered not a word, relaxed not a muscle; it seemed as if
he felt her not with the hands that grasped her,--as if he saw her not
with the eyes that glared fixedly and coldly on her. He bore, or rather
dragged, her to the vast arch that had once been the entrance to the
pagoda, but which, now shattered and ruinous, resembled more the
gulphing yawn of a cavern that harbours the inmates of the desert, than
a work wrought by the hands of man, and devoted to the worship of a
deity.