ing to persevere in trying to do until--until he had done it, he,
puny, poor in inducements, light of weight.

The two of them, there could be no doubt of it, had passed within the
portals after which a change comes over the eyes, and those who enter
see each other endowed with qualities raising the capacity for wonder to
an ecstasy: so much engaging beauty, so much dearness, are not to be
believed!... It can never be established whether the eyes only see truly
when under this charm, or whether then more than at other times illusion
makes of them its fool.

If he had been analytical on the subject of his sentiment for Aurora, as
so often on other subjects, and said to himself that he saw this woman
in a golden transfiguring light because he was in good primordial
fashion in love with her--because, that is to say, obscure affinities of
flesh and blood united with the esteem created by her virtues to make of
him a candle which the touch of her finger-tip miraculously could
light--he would have felt it as a blessed and not a base secret at the
bottom of his attachment.

While they talked of the weather, as they fell to doing when they had
disposed of the subject of the little incense-holder; and, after that,
while they talked of Leghorn and the various seaside places which Aurora
had to choose from for her summer sojourn, a vastly deep conversation
was taking place between them, which we think it not amiss to report,
because by the nature of things the words they would say aloud on this
occasion would be meager and colorless by comparison with the things
they would feel and to some extent convey to each other through mere
proximity.

"O Aurora," exhaled from Gerald, while, looking not far from his usual
self, he said that Ardenza by the sea, a mere three miles from Leghorn,
was a very pretty place, "Aurora, you are warmth, you are shelter, you
are rest. I have no hearth or home except as you let me in out of the
desperate cold of loneliness, and grant me to warm myself at your big
heart. You should see, woman dear, that my thankfulness would make you
happy. Nature, the divine, so formed you that my love would kindle
yours. And when you had given your hand into mine I should find paths of
violets, enchanted paths, for us to walk in which you could never find
without me, nor I find for myself. Put up no petty shield against me,
Aurora; fight me with no petty lance, for I verily am that guest you
were awaiting when on bal