“‘God said it is not good that man should be alone!’”
She smiled and stammered:
“Oh, Cornelius! I want to admire you and lean on you as my guide, teacher, pastor; but you meet all my approaches that way, transformed to a lover.”
“Maya! Maya! Miriamne; let the illusion work; sleep the Leathen sleep; yield to love’s dream; then comes the full noon to awaken to marriage joy. Thou wilt find, not above thee but at thy side, then, the teacher, guide; shepherd as well; but also the husband.”
Miriamne had reached a point of hesitancy, which is, in all lives, just a step from surrender, and the lover, made alert by his ardor, perceived the advantage. Though a prey to hopes and fears, an incarnation of paradoxes, in which bashfulness contested with audacity for control of the will, he gathered all his powers into a grand charge. With a tender vehemence he stormed the citadel of the heart before him. First he imprisoned her hand in his; he had done so before. Now it fluttered strangely; presently it rested as a bird; at first as if frightened, then helpless, then content. All that followed may be easily imagined. Suffice to say that Cornelius Woelfkin just then believed life worth living and the universe made visible, though not by an illusion.
Just as many another of Eve’s daughters placed as she in a tempest of delights, she confessed her capitulation by a series of retorts, which gave her relief from tears by affording apologies for laughter.
“No woman ever so loved as I now? You men all talk that way at betrothal!”
“‘To death!’ Miriamne, ’twill be true with me.”
“Yes, at betrothal and when their wives are dead, they say men are very affectionate. But, Cornelius, remember I’ll expect sweets between times. Do not love me to death at first, vex me to death later, then go mad for love’s sake after I’m gone!”