apable of any higher
thought; and when I remarked that Olalla seemed silent, merely yawned in
my face and replied that speech was of no great use when you had nothing
to say. 'People speak much, very much,' she added, looking at me with
expanded pupils; and then again yawned and again showed me a mouth that
was as dainty as a toy. This time I took the hint, and, leaving her to
her repose, went up into my own chamber to sit by the open window,
looking on the hills and not beholding them, sunk in lustrous and deep
dreams, and hearkening in fancy to the note of a voice that I had never
heard.

I awoke on the fifth morning with a brightness of anticipation that
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 wi