I sprang up, as if to
follow it--rushed to the bars, shook and wrenched at them with my thin,
puny arms--and stood spell-bound, as I caught sight of the cathedral
towers, standing out in grand repose against the horizontal fiery bars of
sunset, like great angels at the gates of Paradise, watching in stately
sorrow all the wailing and the wrong below. And beneath, beneath--the
well-known roofs--Lillian's home, and all its proud and happy memories! It
was but a corner of a gable, a scrap of garden, that I could see beyond
intervening roofs and trees--but could I mistake them? There was the very
cedar-tree; I knew its dark pyramid but too well! There I had walked by
her; there, just behind that envious group of chestnuts, she was now. The
light was fading; it must be six o'clock; she must be in her room now,
dressing herself for dinner, looking so beautiful! And as I gazed, and
gazed, all the intervening objects became transparent and vanished before
the intensity of my imagination. Were my poems in her room still? Perhaps
she had thrown them away--the condemned rioter's poems! Was she thinking of
me? Yes--with horror and contempt.
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