{"id":"01KG8AMYEVHYX3VMS8WJFS590S","cid":"bafkreif465cwngk53son74ejzpt3lacstuyu5zrtzcwiejom5dyukc4mu4","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":6694,"extracted_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:52.921Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 4","source_file":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","start_line":6627,"text":"She lifted her dry burning eyes of long-fringed fire to him.\r\n\r\n\"Pierre--I have no slightest proof--but the guitar was _hers_, I know, I\r\nfeel it was. Say, did I not last night tell thee, how it first sung to\r\nme upon the bed, and answered me, without my once touching it? and how\r\nit always sung to me and answered me, and soothed and loved me,--Hark\r\nnow; thou shalt hear my mother's spirit.\"\r\n\r\nShe carefully scanned the strings, and tuned them carefully; then placed\r\nthe guitar in the casement-bench, and knelt before it; and in low,\r\nsweet, and changefully modulated notes, so barely audible, that Pierre\r\nbent over to catch them; breathed the word _mother, mother, mother_!\r\nThere was profound silence for a time; when suddenly, to the lowest and\r\nleast audible note of all, the magical untouched guitar responded with a\r\nquick spark of melody, which in the following hush, long vibrated and\r\nsubsidingly tingled through the room; while to his augmented wonder, he\r\nnow espied, quivering along the metallic strings of the guitar, some\r\nminute scintillations, seemingly caught from the instrument's close\r\nproximity to the occasionally irradiated window.\r\n\r\nThe girl still kept kneeling; but an altogether unwonted expression\r\nsuddenly overcast her whole countenance. She darted one swift glance at\r\nPierre; and then with a single toss of her hand tumbled her unrestrained\r\nlocks all over her, so that they tent-wise invested her whole kneeling\r\nform close to the floor, and yet swept the floor with their wild\r\nredundancy. Never Saya of Limeean girl, at dim mass in St. Dominic's\r\ncathedral, so completely muffled the human figure. To Pierre, the deep\r\noaken recess of the double-casement, before which Isabel was kneeling,\r\nseemed now the immediate vestibule of some awful shrine, mystically\r\nrevealed through the obscurely open window, which ever and anon was\r\nstill softly illumined by the mild heat-lightnings and\r\nground-lightnings, that wove their wonderfulness without, in the\r\nunsearchable air of that ebonly warm and most noiseless summer night.\r\n\r\nSome unsubduable word was on Pierre's lip, but a sudden voice from out\r\nthe veil bade him be silent.\r\n\r\n\"Mother--mother--mother!\"\r\n\r\nAgain, after a preluding silence, the guitar as magically responded as\r\nbefore; the sparks quivered along its strings; and again Pierre felt as\r\nin the immediate presence of the spirit.\r\n\r\n\"Shall I, mother?--Art thou ready? Wilt thou tell me?--Now? Now?\"\r\n\r\nThese words were lowly and sweetly murmured in the same way with the\r\nword _mother_, being changefully varied in their modulations, till at\r\nthe last _now_, the magical guitar again responded; and the girl swiftly\r\ndrew it to her beneath her dark tent of hair. In this act, as the long\r\ncurls swept over the strings of the guitar, the strange sparks--still\r\nquivering there--caught at those attractive curls; the entire casement\r\nwas suddenly and wovenly illumined; then waned again; while now, in the\r\nsucceeding dimness, every downward undulating wave and billow of\r\nIsabel's tossed tresses gleamed here and there like a tract of\r\nphosphorescent midnight sea; and, simultaneously, all the four winds of\r\nthe world of melody broke loose, and again as on the previous night,\r\nonly in a still more subtile, and wholly inexplicable way, Pierre felt\r\nhimself surrounded by ten thousand sprites and gnomes, and his whole\r\nsoul was swayed and tossed by supernatural tides; and again he heard the\r\nwondrous, rebounding, chanted words:\r\n\r\n    \"Mystery! Mystery!\r\n     Mystery of Isabel!\r\n     Mystery! Mystery!\r\n     Isabel and Mystery!\r\n         Mystery!\"\r\n\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 4"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG8AKJAEQ00QR124VM7H290W","peer_type":"subsection","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG89J1JSYKSGCE149MH9HF6A","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG8AMYEVAJ07P2PC05X3R2Q2","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"prev"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-30T20:48:53.723Z","ts":"2026-01-30T20:49:19.880Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}