py influences, he inhales the slight, ethereal rapture into his
soul, and expires!

And how did Phoebe regard Clifford? The girl's was not one of those
natures which are most attracted by what is strange and exceptional in
human character. The path which would best have suited her was the
well-worn track of ordinary life; the companions in whom she would most
have delighted were such as one encounters at every turn. The mystery
which enveloped Clifford, so far as it affected her at all, was an
annoyance, rather than the piquant charm which many women might have
found in it. Still, her native kindliness was brought strongly into
play, not by what was darkly picturesque in his situation, nor so much,
even, by the finer graces of his character, as by the simple appeal of
a heart so forlorn as his to one so full of genuine sympathy as hers.
She gave him an affectionate regard, because he needed so much love,
and seemed to have received so little. With a ready tact, the result
of ever-active and wholesome sensibility, she discerned what was good
for him, and did it. Whatever was morbid in his mind and experience
she ignored; and thereby kept their intercourse healthy, by the
incautious, but, as it were, heaven-directed freedom of her whole
conduct. The sick in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered more
darkly and hopelessly so by the manifold reflection of their disease,
mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment of those about them;
they are compelled to inhale the poison of their own breath, in
infinite repetition. But Phoebe afforded her poor patient a supply of
purer air. She impregnated it, too, not with a wild-flower scent,--for
wildness was no trait of hers,--but with the perfume of garden-roses,
pinks, and other blossoms of much sweetness, which nature and man have
consented together in making grow from summer to summer, and from
century to century. Such a flower was Phoebe in her relation with
Clifford, and such the delight that he inhaled from her.

Yet, it must be said, her petals sometimes drooped a little, in
consequence of the heavy atmosphere about her. She grew more
thoughtful than heretofore. Looking aside at Clifford's face, and
seeing the dim, unsatisfactory elegance and the intellect almost
quenched, she would try to inquire what had been his life. Was he
always thus? Had this veil been over him from his birth?--this veil,
under which far more of his spirit was hidden than revealed