The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne Chapter 23 Page 21

a distance betwixt her and these rude persecutors.

“These efforts are wholly without avail,” observed the Professor, who had been looking on with an aspect of serene indifference. “The roar of a battery of cannon would be inaudible to the Veiled Lady. And yet, were I to will it, sitting in this very hall, she could hear the desert wind sweeping over the sands as far off as Arabia; the icebergs grinding one against the other in the polar seas; the rustle of a leaf in an East Indian forest; the lowest whispered breath of the bashfullest maiden in the world, uttering the first confession of her love.

Nor does there exist the moral inducement, apart from my own behest, that could persuade her to lift the silvery veil, or arise out of that chair.”