I read these lines with a strange mixture of sensations. "Does he know the truth?" was my first thought; and it made the blood rush to my cheeks. The next was, "Whether he knows it or not, he admires me." I smiled with bitterness indeed, but still I smiled; and as I read these verses, over and over again, they seemed to change the current of my feelings. For the first time, I said to myself, "There are things in the world yet worth living for, besides those I have forfeited--peace of mind, and an untroubled conscience.--There is genius, which, as he says, thrives in the atmosphere of suffering; there is the power which genius gives to 'ride triumphant, and have the world at will;' there are the powerful emotions of the soul when struggling for mastery, when intoxicated with success, when revelling in homage. If sorrow, if guilt, if despair, have made my eyes more bewitching, and my voice more thrilling; if they have roused the latent spirit within me, it shall not be in vain; I will drink deeply at these new sources of enjoyment, if not of happiness; I will cast behind me the burden borne in such anguish; I will break with the _past_, the dreadful past, and begin a new era." And, seizing the paper which was lying on the table, I walked quickly across the library. As I turned the comer of the recess which formed the eastern end of the gallery, I saw Edward sitting by the window, where often, during the preceding summer, we had watched the sunset together. The last rays of the departing light streamed upon him, as he sat absorbed in thought; a book was on his knees; it seemed to have dropt from his hand in the depth of his abstraction; his faultless features, his chiselled mouth, the peculiar colour of his hair, and the light which shed around him a kind of halo, made him at that moment resemble the pictures of saints which Raphael and Domenichino have painted.