sunken reefs, and far away The unquiet, bright Atlantic plain," 

"Marked with spray

while through all sounded incessantly the mournful roar of buffeting wind and surging tide; and whether it was the scene, or the solemn undertone of the sea, the dance music, which a little while before had been so gay, sounded like a wail.

How could it be otherwise? Passion is akin to pain. Love never yet penetrated an intense nature and made the heart light; sentiment has its smiles, its blushes, its brightness, its words of fancy and feeling, readily and at will; but when the internal sub-soiling is broken up, the heart swells with a steady and tremendous pressure till the breast feels like bursting; the lips are dumb, or open only to speak upon indifferent themes. Flowers may be played with, but one never yet cared to toy with flame.

There are souls that are created for one another in the eternities, hearts that are predestined each to each, from the absolute necessities of their nature; and when this man and this woman come face to face, these hearts throb and are one; these souls recognize "my master!" "my mistress!" at the first glance, without words uttered or vows pronounced.

These two young lives, so fresh, so beautiful; these beings, in many things such antipodes, so utterly dissimilar in person, so unlike, yet like; their whole acquaintance a glance on a crowded street and these few hours of meeting,—looked into one another's eyes, and felt their whole nature set each to each, as the vast tide "of the bright, rocking ocean sets to shore at the full moon."

These things are possible. Friendship is excellent, and friendship may be called love; but it is not love. It may be more enduring and placidly satisfying in the end; it may be better, and wiser, and more prudent, for acquaintance to beget esteem, and esteem regard, and regard affection, and affection an interchange of peaceful vows: the result, a well-ordered life and home. All this is admirable, no doubt; an owl is a bird when you can get no other; but the love born of a moment, yet born of eternity, which comes but once in a lifetime, and to not one in a thousand lives, unquestioning, unthinking, investigating nothing, proving nothing, sufficient unto itself,—ah, that is divine; and this divine ecstasy filled these two souls.

Unconsciously. They did not define nor comprehend. They listened to the sea where they sat, and felt tears start to their eyes, yet knew not why. They were silent, and 

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