id to blow once and die, was incapable
of a second growth of love; but I now felt the fallacy of that doctrine,
and was at first humiliated by the discovery. It struck me like a great
heresy against truth and purity; it seemed to lay bare before me the
corruptibility and feebleness of poor human nature. To strive against
it, however, was idle. The second growth was in full flower, yet with a
difference from the first, which I could detect even against the grain
of the passion that was subjugating me. I felt that the second growth
was less simple and devotional than the first; that it had more
exuberance, and was of a wilder character; that it struck not its roots
so deeply, but spread its blossoms more widely; that it was less
engrossing, but more agitating; that it was cultivated with greater
consciousness and premeditation, risked with more caution, fed with more
prudence, and tended more constantly--but all with a lesser waste of the
imagination; that its delights were more fervid but less appeasing; that
it looked not so much into the future with hope and promise, as it
filled the present with rapture; that its memories were neither so sad
nor so vivid, and that it let in caprice, and vanity, and
unreasonableness, and self-love, and the world's esteem, which are all
as dust in the balance, or a feather in the whirlwind, to impetuous
love. I was amazed to find myself a daily waiter upon beauty. Yet so it
was. The vision of Gertrude was now gone from my path--the spectre had
vanished in the broad light of the new passion.

Still, while I paid my court to Astraea, it was not with any intention of
publicity, but furtively, as if a private dread hung over us, or as if
we thought it pleasanter to vail our feelings from observation. We
understood each other in silent looks, which we supposed to be
unintelligible to every body else; she seemed to avoid, designedly, all
appearance of interest in me, and sometimes played the part to such
admiration, as to give me not a few passing pangs of doubt and
uneasiness; and I, seeing how scrupulous she was on that point, and not
choosing to incur rude jests at her expense, was equally unwilling to
betray a feeling which was rendered the more delicious by secrecy. We
imagined ourselves secure; but neither of us could have had much worldly
sagacity or we must have known that all our caution was fruitless.
Basilisks' eyes were around us, and we trod a path beset with serpents.
Fortunatel