His eyes, so intense and penetrative, so wise and brilliant, with all their crystal calm and rousing fire, were as unlike hers as the sun in the diamond to the sun upon the lonely sea. In hers the blue-green transparence seemed to serve alone as a mirror to reflect all hues of heaven; in his, the heaven within as often struggled with the paler show of paradise that Nature lent him in his exile. But if I spoke of the rest,—of the traits that pierce only when the mere veiling loveliness is rent asunder,—I should say it must ever bid me wonder to have discovered the divine fraternity in such genuine and artless symbol. It was as if the same celestial fire permeated their veins,—the same insurgent longings lifted their very feet from the ground. The elfin hands of which I spoke were not more rare, were not more small and subtile, than the little grasping fingers she extended to offer him the bread, and from which his own received it. Nor was there wanting in her smile the strange immortal sweetness that signalized his own,—hers broke upon her parted lips like fragrance, the fragrance that his seemed to bear from the bursting buds of thought in the sunshine of inward fancy. But what riveted the resemblance most was the instancy of their sympathetic communion. While those around had quietly resumed their occupation, too busy to talk,—though certainly they might have been forgiven for being very hungry,—he, no more kneeling, but rather lying than sitting, with his godlike head turned upwards to the sky, continued to accost her, and I heard all they said.
"I knew you again directly, you perceive, but you do not look so naughty now as you did in the school; you were even angry, and I cannot conceive why."
"Cannot you, sir?" she replied, without the slightest embarrassment. "I wonder whether you would like to be rewarded for serving music."
"It rewards us, you cannot avoid its reward; but I agree with you about the silver and the gold. We will have no more medals."
"They like them, sir, those who have toiled for them, and who would not toil but for the promise of something to show."
"And the blue ribbons are very pretty."
"So is the blue sky, and they can neither give it us nor take it from us; nor can they our reward."
"And that reward?" asked he.
"Is to suffer for its sake," she answered.
He lifted his eyebrows in a wondering archness. "To suffer? To suffer, who alone enjoy, and are satisfied, and glorify happiness above all others, and above all other things?"