CHAPTER XXXVII 565
" Some days since: nay, I can number them-- four; it was last Monday night, a singular mood came over me: one in which grief replaced frenzy-- sorrow, sullenness. I had long had the impression that since I could nowhere find you, you must be dead. Late that night-- perhaps it might be between eleven and twelve o ' clock-- ere I retired to my dreary rest, I supplicated God, that, if it seemed good to Him, I might soon be taken from this life, and admitted to that world to come, where there was still hope of rejoining Jane.
" I was in my own room, and sitting by the window, which was open: it soothed me to feel the balmy night-air; though I could see no stars and only by a vague, luminous haze, knew the presence of a moon. I longed for thee, Janet! Oh, I longed for thee both with soul and flesh! I asked of God, at once in anguish and humility, if I had not been long enough desolate, afflicted, tormented; and might not soon taste bliss and peace once more. That I merited all I endured, I acknowledged-- that I could scarcely endure more, I pleaded; and the alpha and omega of my heart ' s wishes broke involuntarily from my lips in the words-- ' Jane! Jane! Jane!'"
" Did you speak these words aloud?"
" I did, Jane. If any listener had heard me, he would have thought me mad: I pronounced them with such frantic energy."
" And it was last Monday night, somewhere near midnight?"
" Yes; but the time is of no consequence: what followed is the strange point. You will think me superstitious,-- some superstition I have in my blood, and always had: nevertheless, this is true-- true at least it is that I heard what I now relate.
" As I exclaimed ' Jane! Jane! Jane!' a voice-- I cannot tell whence the voice came, but I know whose voice it was-- replied, ' I am coming: wait for me;' and a moment after, went whispering on the wind the words-- ' Where are you?'