oved thyself,
but darting light into other objects, on which the eye can gaze less
dazzled. No, no; it is not love that I feel for thee, and therefore
it is that I do not blush to nourish and confess it. Shame on me if I
loved, knowing myself so worthless a thing to thee!

....

"ANOTHER!--my memory echoes back that word. Another! Dost thou mean that
I shall see thee no more? It is not sadness,--it is not despair that
seizes me. I cannot weep. It is an utter sense of desolation. I am
plunged back into the common life; and I shudder coldly at the solitude.
But I will obey thee, if thou wilt. Shall I not see thee again beyond
the grave? O how sweet it were to die!

"Why do I not struggle from the web in which my will is thus entangled?
Hast thou a right to dispose of me thus? Give me back--give me back the
life I knew before I gave life itself away to thee. Give me back the
careless dreams of my youth,---my liberty of heart that sung aloud as it
walked the earth. Thou hast disenchanted me of everything that is not
of thyself. Where was the sin, at least, to think of thee,--to see thee?
Thy kiss still glows upon my hand; is that hand mine to bestow? Thy kiss
claimed and hallowed it to thyself. Stranger, I will NOT obey thee.

....

"Another day,--one day of the fatal three is gone! It is strange to me
that since the sleep of the last night, a deep calm has settled upon my
breast. I feel so assured that my very being is become a part of thee,
that I cannot believe that my life can be separated from thine; and in
this conviction I repose, and smile even at thy words and my own
fears. Thou art fond of one maxim, which thou repeatest in a thousand
forms,--that the beauty of the soul is faith; that as ideal loveliness
to the sculptor, faith is to the heart; that faith, rightly understood,
extends over all the works of the Creator, whom we can know but through
belief; that it embraces a tranquil confidence in ourselves, and a
serene repose as to our future; that it is the moonlight that sways the
tides of the human sea. That faith I comprehend now. I reject all doubt,
all fear. I know that I have inextricably linked the whole that makes
the inner life to thee; and thou canst not tear me from thee, if
thou wouldst! And this change from struggle into calm came to me
with sleep,--a sleep without a dream; but when I woke, it was with
a mysterious sense of happiness,--an indistinct memory of something
blessed,--as if thou hadst