"Have you loved so deeply?"
"With all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind!" groaned Hawthorne, adding: "My dear friend, may God keep you from ever knowing such love and pain and grief as fill my heart to bursting."
Ralph was silent. He saw that here was a grief beyond comfort.
He wondered what was the mysterious nature of Hawthorne's sad love-story, but he was too generous to ask such a question.
He could only gaze at him in tender, silent sympathy.
Hawthorne continued, passionately:
"It is not my way to dwell on my own troubles, but to-night my sorrow overwhelms me! To love and to lose—oh, Ralph, that is the bitterest thing of life!"
"Is she dead, your loved one?"
"Ah! no, she is not dead! I could almost wish that she were, in my dread that she is dead to me forever! And if she is, oh, if she is, how can I bear the gloom of my life henceforward?—the blank darkness of a night of storm following on the sunshine of a perfect day. Oh, God!" groaned Hawthorne, tossing his arms above his pillow in anguish.
The young poet gazed at him in deepest sympathy and pity. He had not loved yet, but he could understand and pity, for to the poet's soul all the secrets of life are felt and known through the subtle occultism of genius.