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By Root 2747 0

the angels. Your hand rested within mine, and my whole soul shook with a tremulous ecstasy. And then but for very shame—but for the fear of grieving or oppressing you—I would have fallen at your feet in as pure—in as real a worship as was ever offered to Idol or to God. And when, afterwards, on those two successive evenings of all-Heavenly delight, you passed to and fro about the room—now sitting by my side, now far away, now standing with your hand resting on the back of my chair, while the praeternatural thrill of your touch vibrated even through the senseless wood into my heart—while you moved thus restlessly about the room—as if a deep Sorrow or a more profound Joy haunted your bosom—my brain reeled beneath the intoxicating spell of your presence, and it was with no merely human senses that I either saw or heard you. It was my soul only that distinguished you there. I grew faint with the luxury of your voice and blind with the voluptuous lustre of your eyes.

Let me quote to you a passage from your letter:—“You will, perhaps, attempt to convince me that my person is agreeable to you—that my countenance interests you:—but in this respect I am so variable that I should inevitably disappoint you if you hoped to find in me to-morrow the same aspect which won you to-day. And, again, although my reverence for your intellect and my admiration of your genius make me feel like a child in your presence, you are not, perhaps, aware that I am many years older than yourself. I fear you do not know it, and that if you had known it you would not have felt for me as you do.”—To all this what shall I—what can I say—except that the heavenly candor with which you speak oppresses my heart with so rich a burden of love that my eyes overflow with sweet tears. You are mistaken, Helen, very far mistaken about this matter of age. I am older than you; and if illness and sorrow have made you seem older than you are—is not all this the best of reason for my loving you the more? Cannot my patient cares—my watchful, earnest attention—cannot the magic which lies in such devotion as I feel for you, win back for you much—oh, very much of the freshness of your youth? But grant that what you urge were even true. Do you not feel in your inmost heart of hearts that the “soul-love” of which the world speaks so often and so idly is, in this instance at least, but the veriest, the most absolute of realities? Do you not—I ask it of your reason, darling, not less than of your heart—do you not perceive that it is my diviner nature—my spiritual being—which burns and pants to commingle with your own? Has the soul age, Helen? Can Immortality regard Time? Can that which began never and shall never end, consider a few wretched years of its incarnate life? Ah, I could weep—I could almost be angry with you for the unwarranted wrong you offer to the purity—to the sacred reality of my affection.—And how am I to answer what you say of your personal appearance? Have I not seen you, Helen, have I not heard the more than melody of your voice? Has not my heart ceased to throb beneath the magic of your smile? Have I not held your hand in mine and looked steadily into your soul through the crystal Heaven of your eyes? Have I not done all these things?—or do I dream?—or am I mad? Were you indeed all that your fancy, enfeebled and perverted by illness, tempts you to suppose that you are, still, life of my life! I would but love you—but worship you the more:—it would be so glorious a happiness to be able to prove to you what I feel! But as it is, what can I—what am I to say? Who ever spoke of you without emotion—without praise? Who ever saw you and did not love?

But now a deadly terror oppresses me; for I too clearly see that these objections—so groundless—so futile when urged to one whose nature must be so well known to you as mine is—can scarcely be meant earnestly; and I tremble lest they but serve to mask others, more real, and which you hesitate—perhaps in pity—to confide to me. Alas! I too distinctly perceive, also, that in no instance you have ever permitted yourself to