Lay
your hand on my back, Raphael mine; I feel a chill like death. The
feeling of cold is there yet. Your lips are burning. How is your hand?
--Cold as ice," she added.
"Mad girl!" exclaimed Raphael.
"Why that tear? Let me drink it."
"O Pauline, Pauline, you love me far too much!"
"There is something very extraordinary going on in your mind, Raphael!
Do not dissimulate. I shall very soon find out your secret. Give that
to me," she went on, taking the Magic Skin.
"You are my executioner!" the young man exclaimed, glancing in horror
at the talisman.
"How changed your voice is!" cried Pauline, as she dropped the fatal
symbol of destiny.
"Do you love me?" he asked.
"Do I love you? Is there any doubt?"
"Then, leave me, go away!"
The poor child went.
"So!" cried Raphael, when he was alone. "In an enlightened age, when
we have found out that diamonds are a crystallized form of charcoal,
at a time when everything is made clear, when the police would hale a
new Messiah before the magistrates, and submit his miracles to the
Academie des Sciences--in an epoch when we no longer believe in
anything but a notary's signature--that I, forsooth, should believe in
a sort of _Mene, Tekel, Upharsin_! No, by Heaven, I will not believe
that the Supreme Being would take pleasure in torturing a harmless
creature.
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