The hours were not enough for the wild romances which I raved
in her ear. She listened, astonished and appalled. Her blue eyes
turned upon me with a sweet deprecation. She clung to me, and then
withdrew, and fled fearfully from the room. But she could not stay
away. She could not resist my voice, in whose tones burned all the
love that filled my heart and brain. The very effort to resist the
desire of seeing her as I saw everybody else, gave a frenzy and an
unnatural tension to my feeling and my manner. I sat by her side,
looking into her eyes, smoothing her hair, folding her to my heart,
which was sunken and deep--why not forever?--in that dream of peace. I
ran from her presence, and shouted, and leaped with joy, and sat the
whole night through, thrilled into happiness by the thought of her
love and loveliness, like a wind-harp, tightly strung, and answering
the airiest sigh of the breeze with music. Then came calmer days--the
conviction of deep love settled upon our lives--as after the hurrying,
heaving days of spring, comes the bland and benignant summer.
"'It is no dream, then, after all, and we are happy,' I said to her,
one day; and there came no answer, for happiness is speechless.
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