they spoke of, though I called it by a different name. I saw that it was love indeed, but love infinitely purified, and with all the sense of possession that mingles with masculine love subtracted from it; and how such a relation might grow and increase, until there arose a sort of secret and vital union of spirit, more real indeed than time and space, so that, even if this were divorced and sundered by absence, or the clouded mind, or death itself, there could be no shadow of doubt as to the permanence of the tie; and a glance passed between the two as they spoke, which made me feel like one who hears an organ rolling, and voices rising in sweet harmonies inside some building, locked and barred, which he may not enter. I could not doubt that the music was there, while I knew that for some dulness or belatedness I was myself shut out; not, indeed, that I doubted of the truth of what was said, but I was in the position of the old saint who said that he believed, and prayed to One to help his unbelief. For I saw that though I projected the lines of my own experience infinitely, adding loyalty to loyalty, and admiration to admiration, it was all on a different plane. This interfusion of personality, this vital union of soul, I could not doubt it! but it made me feel my own essential isolation still more deeply, as when the streaming sunlight strikes warmth and glow out of the fire, revealing crumbling ashes where a moment before had been a heart of flame. "Ah te meae si partem animae rapit Maturior vis, quid moror altera?"--