'There is a love, beautiful Greek, which is not the love only of the
thoughtless and the young--there is a love which sees not with the eyes,
which hears not with the ears; but in which soul is enamoured of soul.
The countryman of thy ancestors, the cave-nursed Plato, dreamed of such
a love--his followers have sought to imitate it; but it is a love that
is not for the herd to echo--it is a love that only high and noble
natures can conceive--it hath nothing in common with the sympathies and
ties of coarse affection--wrinkles do not revolt it--homeliness of
feature does not deter; it asks youth, it is true, but it asks it only
in the freshness of the emotions; it asks beauty, it is true, but it is
the beauty of the thought and of the spirit. Such is the love, O Ione,
which is a worthy offering to thee from the cold and the austere.
Austere and cold thou deemest me--such is the love that I venture to lay
upon thy shrine--thou canst receive it without a blush.'

'And its name is friendship!' replied Ione: her answer was innocent, yet
it sounded like the reproof of one conscious of the design of the
speaker.

'Friendship!' said Arbaces, vehemently. 'No; that is a word too often
profaned to apply to a sentiment so sacred. Friendship! it is a tie
that binds fools and profligates! Friendship! it is the bond that unites
the frivolous hearts of a Glaucus and a Clodius! Friendship! no, that is
an affection of earth, of vulgar habits and sordid sympathies; the
feeling of which I speak is borrowed from the stars'--it partakes of
that mystic and ineffable yearning, which we feel when we gaze on
them--it burns, yet it purifies--it is the lamp of naphtha in the
alabaster vase, glowing with fragrant odorous, but shining only through
the purest vessels. No; it is not love, and it is not friendship, that
Arbaces feels for Ione. Give it no name--earth has no name for it--it
is not of earth--why debase it with earthly epithets and earthly
associations?'

Never before had Arbaces ventured so far, yet he felt his ground step by
step: he knew that he uttered a language which, if at this day of
affected platonisms it would speak unequivocally to the ears of beauty,
was at that time strange and unfamiliar, to which no precise idea could
be attached, from which he could imperceptibly advance or recede, as
occasion suited, as hope encouraged or fear deterred. Ione trembled,
though she knew not why; her veil hid her features, and masked an