"But you will, some time. Your brain is burning, busy, always dreaming and working. The dreams of the brain are often those which play through the slumbers of the heart. If your heart even awoke, your brain would still have the upper hand, and would keep down, keep back your heart. There is no fear for you, Carl, passionate as you are." "Well, Maria, I must confess it frightens me a little when you talk so,--first, because you are so young yourself; and secondly, because if it is all true, how much you must know,--you must know almost more than you feel; it is too much for a girl to know, or a boy either, and I would rather know nothing than so very much." "Carl, all that I know I get from my heart. I am really excessively ignorant, and can teach and tell of nothing in the world but love. That is my life and my faith; and when my heart is bathing in the love that is my own on earth, all earth seems to sink beneath my feet, and I tremble as if raised to heaven. I feel as if God were behind my joy, and as if it must be more than every other knowledge to make me feel so. And when I sing, it is the same,--the music wraps up the love; I feel it more and more." "But, Maria, you are so awfully musical." "Carl, till I knew Florimond I never really sang. I practised, it is true, and was very sick of failures; but _then_ my voice grew clear and strong, and I found what it was meant for,--therefore I cannot be so musical as you are. And I revere you for it, Carl, and prophesy of you such performances that you can never excel them, however much you excel." "Why, Maria, how we used to talk about music together!" "I did not know you so well then, Carl; but do you suppose that music, in one sense, is not all to me? I sometimes think when women try to rise too high, either in their deeds or their desires, that the spirit which bade them so rise sinks back again beneath the weakness of their earthly constitution and never appeals again; or else that the spirit, being too strong, does away with the mortal altogether,--they die, or rather they live again." "Do you ever talk in this strange manner to Anastase, Maria,--I mean, do you tell him you love him better than music?" "He knows of himself, not but that I have often told him; but you may imagine how I love him, Carl, when I tell you he loves music better than me, and yet I would have it so, chiefly for one reason." "What is that?" "That if I am taken from him he will still have something to live for until we meet again."