"I rather think he has got that," says Mr. Burke, reaching out his hand to help me up.
I arose. I jerked that Leghorn flat by the strings, and tied it under the creature's chin with a pull that made her scream. Then I took Mr. Burke's arm and mounted the wooden steps, with a feeling at my heart that is not to be described by mortal pen. What a world of bliss that wicked little wretch broke in upon. His soul was verging towards mine so beautifully. The final words were burning on his lips when she rushed in. Still, memory is left, reason is left. I know what was in that noble heart, and that knowledge is bliss.
I felt this: I knew his meaning. To a common woman he might have said, "I love you dearly. I wish above all things to spend my life with you;" but to a creature made up of sensitive pride and poetic niceties, unclothed proposals of this kind must be quite out of place. Of course I understood all that, and felt the refinement of his conduct deeply.
What more could a man say than this? In order to be delicately personal, one must talk by comparisons. To praise the State one is born in, is to praise one's self. To seize upon any material thing for a poetical comparison with a human being, is to be intensely complimentary to that being.
For the first time in my life I feel the sweet certainty of duplication. My heart swells with the beautiful faith of hope deferred. Those heavenly lines we have sung so often together in our meeting-house come back to my mind—
"To patient faith the prize is sure—"
I dare not go farther and complete the rhyme, because human sensation should not encroach on the divine; but the spirit of that hymn sings in my heart; for if there is anything on this earth that woman should be grateful for, it is love.
Yes, my sisters, at last I feel that I am beloved. A ray of sympathetic feeling has darted from a grand and noble soul to mine, changing that dull, sandy coast to Elysium.
Last night, when I retired to the secrecy of my chamber, it seemed to me that if ever a woman's heart—beg pardon, a young girl's heart—was born again, mine had become more tenderly infantine than it was when I lay one week old in my loving mother's arms.
The moonlight was streaming through the muslin curtains of my room when I entered it. It was an ovation of silvery light dawning upon the new life that opens before me. I do not know how other people feel when the crisis of fate is on them, but in my heart there is room for nothing but infinite thankfulness.