. And now it is deluged with a nectarous flood- the young germs swamped- delicious poison cankering them: now I see myself stretched on an ottoman in the drawing-room at Vale Hall at my bride Rosamond Oliver's feet: she is talking to me with her sweet voice- gazing down on me with those eyes your skilful hand has copied so well- smiling at me with these coral lips. She is mine- I am hers- this present life and passing world suffice to me. Hush! say nothing- my heart is full of delight- my senses are entranced- let the time I marked pass in peace.'
I humoured him: the watch ticked on: he breathed fast and low: I stood silent. Amidst this hush the quarter sped; he replaced the watch, laid the picture down, rose, and stood on the hearth.
'Now,' said he, 'that little space was given to delirium and delusion. I rested my temples on the breast of temptation, and put my neck voluntarily under her yoke of flowers; I tasted her cup. The pillow was burning: there is an asp in the garland: the wine has a bitter taste: her promises are hollow- her offers false: I see and know all this.'
I gazed at him in wonder.
'It is strange,' pursued he, 'that while I love Rosamond Oliver so wildly- with all the intensity, indeed, of a first passion, the object of which is exquisitely beautiful, graceful, and fascinating- I experience at the same time a calm, unwarped consciousness that she would not make me a good wife; that she is not the partner suited to me; that I should discover this within a year after marriage; and that to twelve months' rapture would succeed a lifetime of regret. This I know.'
'Strange indeed!' I could not help ejaculating.
'While something in me,' he went on, 'is acutely sensible to her charms, something else is as deeply impressed with her defects: they are such that she could sympathise in nothing I aspired to- co-operate in nothing I undertook. Rosamond a sufferer, a labourer, a female apostle? Rosamond a missionary's wife? No!'
'But you need not be a missionary
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