Jenifer's Prayer

He and she stood in a room in an inn in the town of Hull–and how she wept! Crying as a child cries, with a woman's feelings joining exquisite pain to those tears; which tears, in a way wonderful and peculiar to beautiful women, scarcely disordered her face, or gave anything worse to her countenance than an indescribably pathetic tenderness. At last, she left the room; he had opened the door and offered his hand to her. It was night; and she changed her chamber candle from her right hand to her left, and gave that right hand to him. He held it, while he said: «I spoke because I dread the influence of the house we are going to, and of those whom you will meet there.»