"Let it," I thought, my heart beating with fearless delight; "I care not whither it sends me; let the eddies cast me adrift--or bear me safely on--I care not--this is to live!" I strove not against the current; I sought not to know where I was, until of itself the stream flowed more calm, until its mighty voice died away in faint murmurs, and I found myself floating safe in still waters. Then I looked up, and like one who after sleeping on earth wakens in fairy- land, I beheld with trembling joy the strange and wonderful country to which I had been borne during the long slumber of a year. Cornelius loved me! it was marvellous, incredible, but a great and glorious thing for all that. He loved me! my heart swelled; my soul rose; I felt humble, exalted and blest far beyond the power of speech to render. I had no definite thought, no definite wish, but before me extended the future like an endless summer day; beneath it spread life as an enchanted region which Cornelius and I paced hand in hand, bending our steps towards that golden west where burned a sun that should never set. "Yes, he loves me!" I repeated to myself as I remembered every token unheeded till then. "And do I love him?" oh! how swift came the irresistible reply: "with every power of my soul, with every impulse of my being, with the blood that flows in my veins, with the heart that beats in my bosom." The answer both startled and charmed me. I did not understand it rightly yet, and like one suddenly taken captive, I looked at my bonds and saw incredulously that the liberty of thought, heart and feeling had departed for ever; that an influence as subtle as it was penetrating had taken possession of my being. One moment I rebelled; but after a brief struggle for freedom, I owned myself conquered; with beating heart and burning brow lowly bent, I confessed my master. Filial reverence, sisterly love, friendship, what had become of ye then? Like weak briars and brambles swept away by a swift stream, ye perished at once on the path of passion. I wondered not that ye should be no more. I only wondered ye had ever been: vain words by which I had long been deluded. I looked back into my past. Since I had known him, I could not remember the time when the thought of Cornelius had not been to me as the daily bread of my heart. There had been familiarity in my deepest tenderness, and lingering passion in my very freedom. I had felt intuitively that I could not make my love for a man, young and not of my blood, too sacred and too pure, and that love ever craving for a more perfect, more entire union, had caught eagerly at these shadows of what it sought. I had said to myself, to him, to all, that my affection was that of a child for its father, of a sister for her brother, of a friend for her friend, because it had not occurred to me that a closer tie might one day bind us; and what I had said, I had believed most sincerely.