The young poet bent his steps homeward with but one thought, one hope in his heart, and that a consuming one: to look again upon the lovely face, to hear again the voice that had enthralled him, had taken his heart by storm and filled it with a veritable grande passion—the rapturous devotion of the virgin heart of an ardent and romantic youth. First love—yet so much more than ordinary love—a pure passion of the soul, in which there was much of worship and nothing of desire. Surely the most pure and holy passion the world has ever known, for in it there was absolutely nothing of self. Like Dante after his first meeting with Beatrice, this Virginia boy-poet had entered upon a Vita Nuova—a new life—made all of beauty.
What difference did the taunts of schoolmates, the hardness of a foster-father make now? The wounds they made had been gratefully healed by the balm of her beauteous words about his mother. Those old wounds were as nothing—neither they nor anything else had power to harm him now. In the new life that had opened so suddenly before him he would bear a charmed existence.
He went to his room before the usual hour that night, for he wanted to be alone with his dreams—with his newest, most beautiful dream. To his room, but not to bed. Life was too beautiful to be wasted in sleep. He lighted his lamp and holding his mother's picture within its circle of light, gazed long and devotedly upon it. Did she know of the great light that had shone out of what seemed a sunless sky upon her boy? Had she, looking out from high Heaven, seen the gracious greeting of the beautiful being who was Madonna and Psyche in one? Had she heard her own cause so sweetly championed, her own name so sweetly cleared of opprobrium?
He threw himself upon his lounge and lay with his hands clasped under his curly head, still dreaming—dreaming—dreaming—until day-dreams were merged into real dreams, for he was fast asleep.
In his sleep he saw the lady of his dreams in a situation of peril, from which he joyfully rescued her. He awoke with a start. His lamp had burned itself out but a late moon flooded the room with the white light that he loved. A breeze laden with odors caught from the many rose-gardens and the heavier-scented magnolias, now in full bloom, it had come across, stirred the curtain. His nostrils, always sensitive to the odors of flowers, drank it in rapturously. So honey-sweet it was, his senses swam.
He arose and looked out upon the incense-breathing blossoms, like phantoms, under the moon. A clock in a distant part of the house was striking twelve. How much more beautiful was the world now—at night's high noon—than at the same hour of the day.
All the house, save himself, was asleep. How easy it would be to escape into this lovely night—to walk through this ambrosial air to the house-worshipful in which she doubtless lay, like a closed lily-flower, clasped in sleep.
A mocking-bird—the Southland's nightingale—in, some tree or bush not far away, burst into passion-shaken melody that seemed to voice, as no words could, his own emotion.
Down the stair he slipped, and out of the door, into the well-nigh intoxicating beauty of the southern summer's night. Indeed, the odors of the dew-drenched flowers—the moonlight—the bird-music, together with his remembrance of his lady's greeting, went to his head like wine.
As he strolled along some lines of Shelley's which had long been favorites of his, sang in his brain: