ad the power to
rouse his weary soul, even for an instant, from the sea of indifference
in which it was plunged.

Claudius lay back in the grass and crossed one leg over the other. Then
he tried to recall the features of the woman who had begun to occupy his
thoughts. She was certainly very beautiful. He could remember one or two
points. Her skin was olive-tinted and dark about the eyes, and the eyes
themselves were like soft burning amber, and her hair was very black.
That was all he could recollect of her--saving her voice. Ah yes! he had
seen beautiful women enough, even in his quiet life, but he had never
heard anything exactly like this woman's tones. There are some sounds
one never forgets. For instance, the glorious cry of the trumpeter swans
in Iceland when they pass in full flight overhead in the early morning;
or the sweet musical ring of the fresh black ice on the river as it
clangs again to sweep of the steel skate. Claudius tried to compare the
sound of that voice to something he had heard, but with little success.

Southern and Eastern born races fall in love at first sight in a way
that the soberer Northener cannot understand. A face in a crowd, a
glance, a droop of the lashes, and all is said. The seed of passion is
sown and will grow in a day to all destroying proportions. But the
Northern heart is a very different affair. It will play with its
affections as a cat plays with a mouse; only the difference is, that the
mouse grows larger and more formidable, like the one in the story of the
Eastern sage, which successively changed its shape until it became a
tiger, and the wise man was driven to take precautions for his own
safety. There is never the least doubt in the mind of an Italian or an
Oriental when he is in love; but an Englishman will associate with a
woman for ten years, and one day will wake up to the fact that he loves
her, and has loved her probably for some time past. And then his whole
manner changes immediately, and he is apt to make himself very
disagreeable unless indeed the lady loves him--and women are rarely in
doubt in their inmost hearts as to whether they love or not.

The heart of the cold northern-born man is a strange puzzle. It can only
be compared in its first awakening to a very backward spring. In the
first place, the previous absence of anything like love has bred a rough
and somewhat coarse scepticism about the existence of passion at all.
Young Boreas scoffs at the mere