e, than the atmosphere with which I seemed to mingle.
I could not have defined my joy, or rather my inward serenity. It was
as some unfathomable secret revealed to me by feelings instead of
words,--as the sensation of the eye passing from darkness into light,
or as the rapture of some mystical soul, secure in the possession of
its God. It was dazzling light, intoxication without giddiness, repose
without heaviness, or immobility. I could have lived on thus during as
many thousand years as there were ripples on the lake, or sands upon
its shores, without perceiving that more seconds had elapsed than were
required for a single respiration. When the immortal dwellers in heaven
first lose the consciousness of the duration of time, they must feel
thus; it was an immutable thought, in the eternity of an instant.

XVI.

These sensations were not precise, or definable. They were too complete
to be scanned; thought could not divide, nor reflection analyze them.
They did not take their rise in the loveliness of the superhuman
creature that I adored, for the shadow of death still lay between her
beauty and my eyes; or in the pride of being loved by her, for I knew
not if I was more in her sight than a dream of morning; or in the hope
of possessing her charms, for my respect was too far above such vile
gratifications of the senses even to stoop to them in thought; or in
the satisfaction of displaying my triumph, for selfish vanity held no
place in my heart, and I knew no one in that secluded spot before whom
I could profane my love by disclosing it; or in the hope of linking her
fate with mine, for I knew she was another's; or in the certainty of
seeing her, and the happiness of following her steps, for I was as
little free as she was, and in a few days fate was to divide us; nor,
lastly, in the certainty of being beloved, for I knew nothing of her
heart, except the one word and look of gratitude that she had addressed
to me.

Mine was another feeling; pure, calm, disinterested, and immaterial. It
was repose of the heart, after having met with the long sought-for, and
till then unfound, object of its restless adoration; the long-desired
idol of that vague, unquiet adoration of supreme beauty which agitates
the soul until the divinity has been discovered, and that our heart has
clung to as a straw to the magnet, or mingled with as sighs with the
surrounding air.

Strange to say, I felt no impatience to see her once more,