I felt my heart leap.—"What a thought is that! Love her I do as I love my God; as I love virtue. To love her in another sense would brand me for a lunatic."
"To love her as a woman, then, appears to you an act of folly."
"In me it would be worse than folly. 'Twould be frenzy."
"And why?"
"Why? Really, my friend, you astonish me. Nay, you startle me—for a question like that implies a doubt in you whether I have not actually harboured the thought."
"No," said he, smiling, "presumptuous though you be, you have not, to-be-sure, reached so high a pitch. But still, though I think you innocent of so heinous an offence, there is no harm in asking why you might not love her, and even seek her for a wife."
Achsa Fielding my wife! Good Heaven!—The very sound threw my soul into unconquerable tumults. "Take care, my friend," continued I, in beseeching accents, "you may do me more injury than you conceive, by even starting such a thought."
"True," said he, "as long as such obstacles exist to your success; so many incurable objections: for instance, she is six years older than you."
"That is an advantage. Her age is what it ought to be."
"But she has been a wife and mother already."