A faint streak of grey was breaking in the east, through the low and heavy clouds of night. I went up to the window, opened it, and kneeling down by it, I looked at that still dark sky, and surrendered myself to the swift current that was bearing me away.
There is a rapture in strong emotions that has subdued the strongest; a perilous charm to which the wisest have yielded. What the storm is to our senses—something that raises, appals and lifts up our very being by its sublimity and terror—the strife of the passions is to the soul. They are her elements, from whose conflicts and electric shocks she derives her strength, her greatness, the knowledge that she is. And for this, though they so often blight her fairest hopes, she loves them.
It is hard, indeed, to be ever striving against those rebellious servants—to feel torn asunder in the struggle; but sweeter is that bitter contest than a long, lifeless peace. The danger lies not so much in the chance of final subjection, as in that of learning to love the strife too well. More perilous than the sweetest music is its tumult; more endless than are all the delights of the senses, and far more intoxicating is its infinite variety. The soul, in her most blissful repose, has nothing to equal the burning charm of her delirium.
My youth had been calm as an ice-bound sea, over which sweep breezes sweet though chill, but that knows neither the storm nor the sunshine of the ardent south. And now the storm had suddenly wakened, and from northern winter, I passed to the glowing tropics. I thought not of love or passion, of bliss or torment; I felt like one seized by foaming rapids, and swept far beyond human ken, with the sound of the rushing torrent ever in my ears. I yielded to a force that would not be resisted.
"Let it," I thought, my heart beating with fearless delight; "I care not whither it sends me; let the eddies cast me adrift—or bear me safely on—I care not—this is to live!"
I strove not against the current; I sought not to know where I was, until of itself the stream flowed more calm, until its mighty voice died away in faint murmurs, and I found myself floating safe in still waters. Then I looked up, and like one who after sleeping on earth wakens in fairy- land, I beheld with trembling joy the strange and wonderful country to which I had been borne during the long slumber of a year. Cornelius loved me! it was marvellous, incredible, but a great and glorious thing for all that. He loved me! my heart swelled; my soul rose; I felt humble, exalted and blest far beyond the power of speech to render. I had no definite thought, no definite wish, but before me extended the future like an endless summer day; beneath it spread life as an enchanted region which Cornelius and I paced hand in hand, bending our steps towards that golden west where burned a sun that should never set.
"Yes, he loves me!" I repeated to myself as I remembered every token unheeded till then. "And do I love him?" oh! how swift came the irresistible reply: "with every power of my soul, with every impulse of my being, with the blood that flows in my veins, with the heart that beats in my bosom." The answer both startled and charmed me. I did not understand it rightly yet, and like one suddenly taken captive, I looked at my bonds and saw incredulously that the liberty of thought, heart and feeling had departed for ever; that an influence as subtle as it was penetrating had taken possession of my being. One moment I rebelled; but after a brief struggle for freedom, I owned myself conquered; with beating heart and burning brow lowly bent, I confessed my master.
Filial reverence, sisterly love, friendship, what had become of ye then? Like weak briars and brambles swept away by a swift stream, ye perished at once on the path of passion. I wondered not that ye should be no more. I only wondered ye had ever been: vain words by which I had long been deluded.
I looked back into my past. Since I had known him, I could not remember the time when the thought of Cornelius had not been to me as the daily bread of my heart. There had been familiarity in my deepest tenderness, and lingering passion in my very freedom. I had felt intuitively that I could not make my love for a man, young and not of my blood, too sacred and too pure, and that love ever craving for a more perfect, more entire union, had caught eagerly at these shadows of what it sought. I had said to myself, to him, to all, that my affection was that of a child for its father, of a sister for her brother, of a friend for her friend, because it had not occurred to me that a closer tie might one day bind us; and what I had said, I had believed most sincerely.
I was very young and very innocent. Of love I had read little, and seen less. So long as it came not to me in visible aspect; so long as I felt not within myself some great change, I dreamt not of it. There is a love that lies in the heart unconscious of itself, like a child asleep in its cradle—and this I had never suspected. There is a love which grows with onr years, until it becomes part of our being; which never agitates, because it has no previous indifference, no remembrance of the time in which it was not, against which to strive; which has purer and deeper signs than the beating heart, the blushing cheek, the averted look—and all this I knew not. Where there is no resistance, there can be no struggle; but because there is no struggle shall any one dare to say— there is no victory? Reduce to logic the least logical of all passions, and argue with a feeling that smiles at argument, and disdains to reply.