She had stopped in her progress while this stream of enthusiasm poured from her lips. Her action was suited to her utterance. Unaccustomed to restraint--nay, accustomed only to pour herself forth to woods, and trees, and waters, she was scarcely conscious of the presence of any other companion, yet she looked even while she spoke, in the eyes of Stevens. He gazed on her with glances of unconcealed admiration. The unsophisticated nature which led her to express that enthusiasm which a state of conventional existence prompts us, through fear of ridicule, industriously to conceal, struck him with the sense of a new pleasure. The novelty alone had its charm; but there were other sources of delight. The natural grace and dignity of the enthusiastic girl, adapting to such words the appropriate action, gave to her beauty, which was now in its first bloom, all the glow which is derived from intellectual inspiration. Her whole person spoke. All was vital, spiritual, expressive, animated; and when the last word lingered on her lips, Stevens could scarcely repress the impulse which prompted him to clasp her in his embrace. “Margaret!” he exclaimed--“Miss Cooper!--you are yourself a poet!” “No, no!” she murmured, rather than spoke;--“would I were!--a dreamer only--a self-deluded dreamer.” “You can not deceive me!” he continued, “I see it in your eyes, your action; I hear it in your words. I can not be deceived. You are a poet--you will, and must be one!” “And if I were!” she said mournfully, “of what avail would it be here? What heart in this wilderness would be touched by song of mine? Whose ear could I soothe in this cold and sterile hamlet? Where would be the temple--who the worshippers--even were the priestess all that her vanity would believe, or her prayers and toils might make her? No, no! I am no poet; and if I were, better that the flame should go out--vanish altogether in the smoke of its own delusions--than burn with a feeble light, unseen, untrimmed, unhonored--perhaps, beheld with the scornful eye of vulgar and unappreciating ignorance!” “Such is not your destiny, Margaret Cooper,” replied Stevens, using the freedom of address, perhaps unconsciously, which the familiarity of country life is sometimes found to tolerate. “Such is not your destiny, Margaret. The flame will not go out--it will be loved and worshipped!” “Ah! never! what is here to justify such a hope--such a dream?”