seemed to challenge fate. I was sure of myself, light of heart and foot,
and resolved to put my love incontinently to the touch of knowledge. It
should lie no longer under the bonds of silence, a dumb thing, living by
the eye only, like the love of beasts; but should now put on the spirit,
and enter upon the joys of the complete human intimacy. I thought of it
with wild hopes, like a voyager to El Dorado; into that unknown and
lovely country of her soul, I no longer trembled to adventure. Yet when
I did indeed encounter her, the same force of passion descended on me
and at once submerged my mind; speech seemed to drop away from me like a
childish habit; and I but drew near to her as the giddy man draws near
to the margin of a gulf. She drew back from me a little as I came; but
her eyes did not waver from mine, and these lured me forward. At last,
when I was already within reach of her, I stopped. Words were denied me;
if I advanced I could but clasp her to my heart in silence; and all that
was sane in me, all that was still unconquered, revolted against the
thought of such an accost. So we stood for a second, all our life in our
eyes, exchanging salvos of attraction and yet each resisting; and then,
with a great effort of the will, and conscious at the same time of a
sudden bitterness of disappointment, I turned and went away in the same
silence.

What power lay upon me that I could not speak? And she, why was she also
silent? Why did she draw away before me dumbly, with fascinated eyes?
Was this love? or was it a mere brute attraction, mindless and
inevitable, like that of the magnet for the steel? We had never spoken,
we were wholly strangers; and yet an influence, strong as the grasp of a
giant, swept us silently together. On my side, it filled me with
impatience; and yet I was sure that she was worthy; I had seen her
books, read her verses, and thus, in a sense, divined the soul of my
mistress. But on her side, it struck me almost cold. Of me, she knew
nothing but my bodily favour; she was drawn to me as stones fall to the
earth; the laws that rule the earth conducted her, unconsenting, to my
arms; and I drew back at the thought of such a bridal, and began to be
jealous for myself. It was not thus that I desired to be loved. And then
I began to fall into a great pity for the girl herself. I thought how
sharp must be her mortification, that she, the student, the recluse,
Felipe's saintly monitress, should have thus