These reflections make me also melancholy, and I in vain endeavoured to cheer her. The calm sadness of her look, the vanishing bloom of her cheek, her deep silence, and her efforts to conceal, by an affected cheerfulness, the grief which was gnawing her heart, added to my friendship the genial warmth and tenderness of sympathy. How gladly would I have sacrificed my life to procure happiness for her!
One evening when I accompanied her singing on my harp, a sudden burst of tears choked her voice. Alarmed, I ceased playing. She rose, and was on the point of hurrying to her apartment to conceal her grief.
How touching, in moments of quiet suffering, are youth, beauty, and innocence. I seized her hand, and held her back.
“No!” she exclaimed, “let me go.”
“Stay, I cannot possibly let you go in this excited state. May I not witness your grief? Am I not your friend? Do you not yourself call me so? And does not this pleasing name give me a right to ask you the cause of that affliction which you in vain endeavour to conceal from me?”
“Leave me, I conjure you, leave me,” she cried, as she endeavoured, with feeble efforts, to free herself.
“No,” said I, “you are unhappy.”
“Unhappy, alas!” she sighed, with unrestrained grief, drooping her beautiful face on my bosom to conceal her tears.
Involuntarily I clasped my arms around the gentle sufferer. A deep sympathy seized me. I stammered forth some words of consolation, and begged her to be calm.
“Alas! I am unhappy,” she exclaimed, sobbing, and with vehemence. I dared not endeavour further to appease the storm of feeling by my untimely persuasions; and, letting her weep without interruption, I led her back to her seat, as I felt that she became exhausted and trembling, her head resting still on my bosom.