was pouring into her ear that sugared
passage in _Endymion_, appropriately beginning, 'O known unknown,'
previously 'got up' for the purpose; but alas! not too perfectly to
prevent a break-down, though, fortunately, at a point that admitted a
ready turn to the dilemma:--

'Still
Let me entwine thee surer, surer ...'

Here exigency compelled N. to make surety doubly, yea, trebly, sure; but
memory still forsaking him, the rascal, having put deeper and deeper
significance into his voice with each repetition, dropped it altogether
as he drew her close to him, and seemed to fail from the very excess of
love. An hour after, he was bounding into the moonlight in an
intoxication of triumph. She was won. The beckoning wonder had come down
to him. And yet it was real moonlight--was not that his own grace in
silhouette, making a mirror even of the hard road?--real grass over
which he had softly stept from her window, real trees, all real,
except--yes! was it real love?

In the lives of all passionate lovers of women there are two
broadly-marked periods, and in some a third: slavery, lordship, and
service. The first is the briefest, and the third, perhaps, seldom
comes; the second is the most familiar.

Awakening, like our forefather, from the deep sleep of childish things,
the boy finds a being by his side of a strange hushing fairness, as
though in the night he had opened his eyes and found an angel by his
bed. Speech he has not at all, and his glance dare not rise beyond her
bosom; till, the presence seeming gracious, he dares at length stretch
out his hand and touch her gown; whereon an inexplicable new joy
trembles through him, as though he stood naked in a May meadow through
the golden rain of a summer shower. Should her fingers touch his arm by
chance, it is as though they swept a harp, and a music of piercing
sweetness runs with a sudden cry along his blood. But by and by he comes
to learn that he has made a comical mistake about this wonder. With his
head bent low in worship, he had not seen the wistfulness of her gaze on
him; and one day, lo! it is she who presses close to him with the timid
appeal of a fawn. Indeed, she has all this time been to him as some
beautiful woodland creature might have seemed, breaking for the first
time upon the sight of primitive man. Fear, wonder inexpressible,
worship, till a sudden laughing thought of comprehension, then a lordly
protectiveness, and, afte