eyes rested for one brief moment upon his,
then fell before the intensity of his gaze, he was conscious of
spiritual influences beyond the reach of reason. In a tremulous ecstacy
he bent and pressed his lips upon the hand that lay within his own and
it was with difficulty that he restrained himself from falling upon his
knees before her in actual worship.

Three evenings of "all heavenly delight" he spent in her
companionship--sometimes in the seclusion and dusk of her quiet
drawing-room, sometimes walking among the roses in her garden, or among
the mossy tombs in the town cemetery--their sympathetic natures finding
expression in such conversation as poets delight in. Under the
intoxicating spell of her presence all other dreams passed, for the
time, into nothingness and he passionately cried,

"Helen, I love now--_now_--for the first and only time!"

Yet he was poor, and the weaknesses which had caused him to fall in the
past might cause him to fall in the future. How could he plead for a
return of his love?

His very self-abasement made his plea more strong. Still, she did not
yield too suddenly. True, she too, was under the spell, but she resisted
it. As he found his voice, and his eloquence filled the room a
restlessness possessed her. Now she sat quite still by his side, now
rose and wandered about the apartment--now stood with her hand resting
upon the back of his chair while his nearness thrilled her.

There were objections, she told him--she was older than he.

"Has the soul age, Helen?" he answered her. "Can immortality regard
time? Can that which began never and shall never end consider a few
wretched years of its incarnate life? Do you not perceive that it is my
diviner nature--my spiritual being, that burns and pants to commingle
with your own?"

She urged her frail health as an objection.

For that he would love--worship her--the more, he said. He plead for her
pity upon his loneliness--his sorrows--and swore that he would comfort
and soothe her in hers, through life, and when death should come,
joyfully go down with her into the night of the grave.

Finally he appealed to her ambition.

"Was I right, Helen, in my first impression of you?--in the impression
that you are ambitious? If so, and if you will have faith in me, I can
and will satisfy your wildest desires. Would it not be glorious to
establish in America, the sole unquestionable aristocracy--that of the
intellect--to secure its suprema