Her locks ambrosial, would that I were you,
To wanton with the tangles of her hair.
“O leaping waves! that press and lip and lave
Her thousand beauties, when shall it be mine
To touch, and kiss, and clasp her even as you?
“But she more loves the blossom and the breeze
Than lip or hand of mine, and thy cold clasp,
O barren sea! than these impassioned arms.”
The last line of each stanza was repeated. Clara realized that Paul had never sung to her before. “I don’t like your song,” she said, but doubtless with that glance which, according to her confession an hour ago to Susie, she had never given him; for he rose with a cry of tenderest passion, clasped her in his arms, and pressed his lips long and silently upon her hair, holding her head the while softly against his breast. Clara heard his heart beating loud and fast. There they stood. Neither could desire to speak or move. It was heaven enough to know that the supreme moment that revealed them fully to each other, had come at last. From this close embrace to the folding-down of Love’s kiss upon the lips, in “perfect purple state,” as Mrs. Browning says, “the transition was easy,” which Mrs. Browning does not say. The kisses of these two were different from nearly all others. It was soul meeting and mingling with soul, and the sensitive lips were only the medium. That may seem obscure to philosophers who are always seeking in vain for the seat of the soul. Lovers of the nobler and finer type, emotional beings, who will not have their altars profaned by the contact of unholy offerings, never have any doubts about soul. To them it is not an entity which may be found here or there; it is life—the one thing infinitely precious, and they are not to be disturbed by nicely-studied definitions. Are not lovers of this rare type the truest philosophers?
It is like an impertinence to try to describe the unutterably perfect state of Paul and Clara as they stood there by the piano. A cynical observer would probably have said that they uttered more nonsense in the short space of ten minutes than he would have believed possible; but he would only thereby show his ignorance of the mysterious power they possessed of