In the glow of a new and overpowering emotion, such indeed was her feeling. He gathered her up closer in his arms. He pressed his lips upon the rich ripe beauties of hers, as some hungering bee, darting upon the yet unrifled flower which it first finds in the shadows of the forest, clings to, and riots on, the luscious loveliness, as if appetite could only be sated in its exhaustion. She struggled and freed herself from his embrace: but, returning home that evening her eye was cast upon the ground; her step was set down hesitatingly; there was a tremor in her heart; a timid expression in her face and manner! These were proofs of the discovery which she then seems to have made for the first time, that there is a power stronger than mere human will--a power that controls genius; that mocks at fame; feels not the lack of fortune, and is independent of the loss of friends! She now first knew her weakness. She had felt the strength of love! Ah! the best of us may quail, whatever his hardihood, in the day when love asserts HIS strength and goes forth to victory. Margaret Cooper sought her chamber, threw herself on the bed, and turned her face in the pillow to hide the burning blushes which, with every movement of thought and memory, seemed to increase upon her cheek. Yet, while she blushed and even wept, her heart throbbed and trembled with the birth of a new emotion of joy. Ah! how sweet is our first secret pleasure--shared by one other only--sweet to that other as to ourself--so precious to him also. To be carried into our chamber--to be set up ostentatiously--there, where none but ourselves may see--to be an object of our constant tendance, careful idolatry, keen suspicion, delighted worship! Ah! but if the other makes it no idol--his toy only--what shall follow this desecration of the sacred thing! What but shame, remorse, humiliation, perhaps death!--alas! for Margaret Cooper, the love which had so suddenly grown into a precious divinity with her, was no divinity with him. He is no believer. He has no faith in such things, but like the trader in religion, he can preach deftly the good doctrines which he can not feel and is slow to practise. CHAPTER XXVI. FALL.