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He knew he could not sleep that night, so did not undress when he went to his room. For awhile he walked up and down in suppressed excitement. This was the most important day of his life. She, whom his heart had set above all other earthly prizes, had consented to be his for ever. Intoxicating thought! For ever! He should now be specially privileged to see her every day. Every day, until she became his finally, and then no power on earth could take her from him for an hour. His own, his darling, his most beautiful and amiable Marie. He should not call her Marie. It had an unfamiliar, foreign sound. But how sweet and dutiful and homely sounded Mary! It was the gentlest and the dearest name borne by woman. His gentlest and his dearest love. What a gift bounteous Providence had bestowed on him that day! All life ought to be one long thanksgiving for this rich boon. When morning came, and she entered the breakfast-room and he went to her--to her, his most dear love--and their eyes met and they looked with a new meaning into the face of one another, what profound, what sober joy! He would not hold her hand unduly, but press it and release it, and thank her again with his eyes. And all through the time, when others were by, they would have secret signals of love confessed, and these signals would be invisible or else unintelligible to anyone but themselves. And when they were alone--when she and he were alone! Oh, priceless privilege to be alone with her, and free to speak to her of love, and sit beside her as a lover might, and draw the dear form close to him, and kiss her lips! Hold her to him and say no word, but feel through all his nature the one supreme emotion welling up continually, each moment seeming richer and richer as it came, and in his mind only one thought, 'It is she! It is she!' Sleep? He could not sleep now. Those who had dull humdrum lives might sleep; but he--he, with all this joy for the present, this anticipation for the future, how could he sleep? No, no. No sleep for him to-night. He had never before regretted he did not smoke. If what smokers said about tobacco was true, it would be delightful to sit here now before the fire, and while looking at her face through the halo lent by a pipe, count the strikings of the clocks, and mark the lessening time that separated her from him. Read? No. He didn't think he could read. Verse was out of the question. His life now was a poem, and he should be able to see beauty in nothing that did not resemble her--that she did not share. Ah, so Nevill had sent him those promised books. They were all new to him, He would look through them. They might make him sleepy. No doubt, if they contained any such absurdities as Nevill had told him, they would amuse him or put him to sleep. He wished he could go to sleep. Half-a-dozen books lay on the dressing-table. He turned them over for a few minutes and then selected one. It was full of diagrams and other drawings. He amused himself for a few minutes looking at these. His eye caught the word 'love.' This was apropos of his condition; and, with a smile of incredulous wonder on his face, he turned to read what the author had to say on the subject. Before he had read half-a-dozen pages he threw the book down with contempt. He took up another. This proved too technical for him. He could not understand what he read. He put that away quietly. Next he found a cheerful-looking book of which he had heard, but never seen. It was in the line of natural history, and yet unlike any natural history hitherto published. He opened it and began to read. It interested him at once. He read rapidly. He flew over the pages. This was the most remarkable book which had ever fallen into his hands. He became wholly absorbed in it. He turned the leaves and turned the leaves as though he were looking for some marked passage, not reading the printed words. This book fascinated him as no book had had power to do before. It was a poem of facts. Here were wonders he had never dreamed of paraded before his eyes, not out of the imagination of a poet, but out of God's great storehouse, Nature. Here were vast truths of Nature brought home to the everyday pathways of men. His face grew pale, and his eyes blazed. He did not hear the clocks strike. He took no heed of time. He rushed through the book at so great a rate, he could not pause to think or to regard himself. It was close to five o'clock when he finished the last chapter of that book. He felt that sleep had drawn further off than ever. Again he paced up and down the room. His love. His Mary. His wife that was to be. Close to five only! Would night never pass until he should see her again? In love hours seemed as long as in childhood. The hour a child is kept in school when the others have gone seems an hour of infinite pleasant possibilities to the unfortunate prisoner. The hour a lover is separated from his newly-won mistress seems more spacious still, for love crowds more joy into a minute than childhood into an hour. No sleep. No rest. Nothing else to read. Yes. Another book. Another book by the same author too! That was fortunate. No doubt it would be more interesting than the last. It dealt with a more interesting subject--Man. For half-an-hour he read here and there. This time, before he had finished the first chapter, his face had flushed, his manner become excited. At last he let the book fall to the ground, and cried, in a suppressed voice,-- 'What abomination is this! What monstrous blasphemy! Man the accidental descendant of the ape! Why is not this book burned by the common hangman? How can any printer and publisher be got so base as to lend themselves to this impious affront upon Heaven? Oh God, that men placed by Thee upon this earth of Thine, should defile it and outrage Thee with such heinous thoughts! Glory be to God on high, and on earth peace to men of good-will.' He drew back the curtain of his window, placed a chair to the window, put out the light, and sat down by the window, and looked out upon London in the hour of that greatest darkness, the hour before the dawn. Then he had a vision, and later on a dream.