interruption as more than a rudeness, to be forgiven me on the score of
my feeble nervous condition.

While this superadded consciousness of the actual was almost constant
with me, I had never had a recurrence of that distinct prevision which I
have described in relation to my first interview with Bertha; and I was
waiting with eager curiosity to know whether or not my vision of Prague
would prove to have been an instance of the same kind. A few days after
the incident of the opal ring, we were paying one of our frequent visits
to the Lichtenberg Palace. I could never look at many pictures in
succession; for pictures, when they are at all powerful, affect me so
strongly that one or two exhaust all my capability of contemplation. This
morning I had been looking at Giorgione's picture of the cruel-eyed
woman, said to be a likeness of Lucrezia Borgia. I had stood long alone
before it, fascinated by the terrible reality of that cunning, relentless
face, till I felt a strange poisoned sensation, as if I had long been
inhaling a fatal odour, and was just beginning to be conscious of its
effects. Perhaps even then I should not have moved away, if the rest of
the party had not returned to this room, and announced that they were
going to the Belvedere Gallery to settle a bet which had arisen between
my brother and Mr. Filmore about a portrait. I followed them dreamily,
and was hardly alive to what occurred till they had all gone up to the
gallery, leaving me below; for I refused to come within sight of another
picture that day. I made my way to the Grand Terrace, since it was
agreed that we should saunter in the gardens when the dispute had been
decided. I had been sitting here a short space, vaguely conscious of
trim gardens, with a city and green hills in the distance, when, wishing
to avoid the proximity of the sentinel, I rose and walked down the broad
stone steps, intending to seat myself farther on in the gardens. Just as
I reached the gravel-walk, I felt an arm slipped within mine, and a light