"Oh! I would make it populous. I would draw worshippers from the four points of the earth,—and yet it would be a greater triumph to subdue one proud, hitherto impregnable heart."
Her eyes flashed like gunpowder as she uttered this, sotto voce it is true, but still loud enough to be heard half across the room.
"Goodby," she suddenly exclaimed, "they are beckoning me; I must go; try to like me, precious creature; I shall be quite miserable if you do not."
Then passing her arm round me, an arm firm, polished, and white as ivory, she gave me a loud, emphatic kiss, laughed, and left me almost as much confused as if one of the other sex had taken the same liberty.
"Is she," thought I, "a young man in disguise?"
CHAPTER XXII.
What am I writing?
Sometimes I throw down the pen, saying to myself, "it is all folly, all verbiage. There is a history within worth perusing, but I cannot bring it forth to light. I turn over page after page with the fingers of thought. I see characters glowing or darkened with passion,—lines alternately bright and shadowy, distinct and obscure, and it seems an easy thing to make a transcript of these for the outward world."
Easy! it requires the recording angel's pen to register the history of the human heart. "The thoughts that breathe, the thoughts that burn," how can they be expressed? The mere act of clothing them in words makes them grow cold and dull. The molten gold, the fused iron hardens and chills in the forming mould.