`` Have patience with me , Elizabeth ! '' cried he , passionately . `` Do not desert me though this veil must be between us here on earth . Be mine , and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face , no darkness between our souls . It is but a mortal veil ; it is not for eternity . Oh , you know not how lonely I am , and how frightened to be alone behind my black veil ! Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity for ever . '' `` Lift the veil but once and look me in the face , '' said she . `` Never ! It can not be ! '' replied Mr. Hooper . `` Then farewell ! '' said Elizabeth . She withdrew her arm from his grasp and slowly departed , pausing at the door to give one long , shuddering gaze that seemed almost to penetrate the mystery of the black veil . But even amid his grief Mr. Hooper smiled to think that only a material emblem had separated him from happiness , though the horrors which it shadowed forth must be drawn darkly between the fondest of lovers . From that time no attempts were made to remove Mr. Hooper 's black veil or by a direct appeal to discover the secret which it was supposed to hide . By persons who claimed a superiority to popular prejudice it was reckoned merely an eccentric whim , such as often mingles with the sober actions of men otherwise rational and tinges them all with its own semblance of insanity . But with the multitude good Mr. Hooper was irreparably a bugbear . He could not walk the street with any peace of mind , so conscious was he that the gentle and timid would turn aside to avoid him , and that others would make it a point of hardihood to throw themselves in his way . The impertinence of the latter class compelled him to give up his customary walk at sunset to the burial-ground ; for when he leaned pensively over the gate , there would always be faces behind the gravestones peeping at his black veil .
A fable went the rounds that the stare XXXXX the dead people drove him thence .
By as at behind between from of on over with