s that of an angel's, was I safe in risking fame or fortune
in an attempt to acquire what in the possession might prove as bare and
common-place as a sweep of mountain heather stripped of its sunshine.
Curbing every erratic beat of my heart, I summoned up her image as it
bloomed in my fancy, and surveying it with cruel eyes, asked what was
real and what the fruit of my own imagination. The gentle eye, the
trembling lip, the girlish form eloquent with the promise of coming
womanhood,--were these so rare, that beside them no other woman should
seem to glance or smile or move? And her words! what had she said, that
any simple-minded, modest yet loving girl might not have uttered under
the circumstances. Surely my belief in her being the one, the best and
the dearest was a delusion, and to no delusion was I willing to
sacrifice my art. But straight upon that conclusion came sweeping down a
flood of counter-reasons. If not the wonder she seemed, she was at least
a wonder to me. If I had seen her under romantic circumstances, and
unconsciously been influenced by them, the influence had remained and
nothing would ever rob her form of the halo thus acquired. Whether I
ever won her to my fireside or not, she must always remain the fairy
figure of my dreams, and being so, the gentle eye and tender lip
acquired a value that made them what they seemed, the exponent of love
and happiness. And lastly if love well or illy founded was an uncertain
joy, and the passion for a woman a poor substitute for the natural
incentive of talent or ambition, _this_ love had within it the beginning
of something deeper than joy, and in the passion thus cheaply
characterized, dwelt a force and living fire that notwithstanding all I
have hitherto achieved, has ever been lacking from my dreams of
endeavor.

As you will see, the most natural question of all did not disturb me in
these cogitations: And that was, whether in making the sacrifice I
proposed, I should meet with the reward I had promised myself. The
fancies of a young girl of sixteen are not usually of a stable enough
character to warrant a man in building upon them his whole future
happiness, especially a young girl situated like Miss Preston in the
midst of friends who would soon be admirers, and adulators who would
soon be her humble slaves. But the doubt which a serious contemplation
of this risk must have presented, was of so unnerving a character, I
dared not admit it. _If_ I made the sa