In its sleep there was that slumber, so deep and rigid, which a thunderbolt could not have disturbed; and in such sleep often it moved its arms, as to embrace the air: often its lips stirred with murmured sounds of indistinct affection,--NOT FOR HER; and all the while upon its cheeks a hue of such celestial bloom, upon its lips a smile of such mysterious joy! Then, when it waked, its eyes did not turn first to HER,--wistful, earnest, wandering, they roved around, to fix on her pale face, at last, in mute sorrow and reproach.
Never had Viola felt before how mighty was her love for Zanoni; how thought, feeling, heart, soul, life,--all lay crushed and dormant in the icy absence to which she had doomed herself! She heard not the roar without, she felt not one amidst those stormy millions,--worlds of excitement labouring through every hour.

Only when Glyndon, haggard, wan, and spectre-like, glided in, day after day, to visit her, did the fair daughter of the careless South know how heavy and universal was the Death-Air that girt her round.

Sublime in her passive unconsciousness,--her mechanic life,--she sat, and feared not, in the den of the Beasts of Prey.
The door of the room opened abruptly, and Glyndon entered.

His manner was more agitated than usual.
"Is it you, Clarence ?" she said in her soft, languid tones.

"You are before the hour I expected you." "Who can count on his hours at Paris ?" returned Glyndon, with a frightful smile.