new life for me. I realized that I had been living in a darkened room, and that a window had suddenly been thrown open, letting in upon me a shower of golden light, with the songs of birds and the incense of flowers. My old life had been a contented one, had known the pleasures to be derived from association with books and God's great out-door miracles. The new life, whose silver dawn was be[134]ginning to tip my soul with a strange radiance, held untold joys which belong rightly to heaven, and which numbed my mind as I strove blindly after comprehension. I was as a little child left all at once alone upon the world. I stood, helpless, trying to centralize my disordered thoughts, with a strange oppressed feeling in my breast which deep respirations could not drive away. I was deeply, deeply troubled, and my mind was in a maze. But one idea possessed me, and that doggedly asserted itself, overriding the tumult in my brain. I was longing, madly longing, to see again her whom I loved. The word in my mind was like the touch of a white-hot iron, and I started as if stung, and fell to pacing nervously up and down. It could not be; it could not be! That child of nineteen,—I a man of forty-five! The idea was monstrous! What an old fool I had been! I did[135] not know my own mind, that was all. I would be all right in a day or two. But still that sinking feeling weighed above my heart, and my usually calm pulse was rioting with something other than exercise. [134] [135] "Let it be love!" I cried at last, in my troubled soul. "The painful bliss of this half hour's experience is worth the cost of denial, for she shall never know!" Thus did I, poor worm, commune in my fool's heaven, recking not, nor knowing, that I was setting at naught the plans of my Creator. At breakfast I was myself, although my hand trembled when I conveyed food to my mouth, and I felt my cheeks coloring when she came in a little late, arrayed in a pink-flowered, flowing gown, and looking as fresh as though she had just risen, bathed in dew, from the blue-and-crimson cup of a morning-glory. [136]"How did you rest after your night ride?" she smiled, sitting by me and resting her elbows on the edge of the table, then pillowing her round chin in her pink palms. [136] "I slept better for my outing," I answered promptly, lying with the ease
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