In the meantime, she whose image, whether in truth it was _an eidolon_, or merely the idea of a diseased mind and preoccupied spirit, had been so busy during the hours of darkness, had awakened all refreshed by light and innocent slumbers, with the first peep of day, and arising from her couch had descended into the garden, still half enveloped in the dewy vapors of the summer night, half glimmering in the slant radiance of the new-risen sun. She was the first at her appointment, for Durzil had not yet made his appearance, and she walked to and fro awaiting him, among the flowery thickets and sweet scented shrubberies all bathed in the copious night-dews, half wondering, half-guessing, what it could be that he should so earnestly desire to communicate. And as she walked, she considered with herself all that had occurred during the last three days, and the more she considered, the less was she able to comprehend the workings of her own mind, or to explain to herself wherefore it was that she could not divest herself of the idea that the crisis of her life, the fate of her heart was at hand. That she had rejected Durzil’s proffered love, his honest, manly love, she knew that she ought not to regret, for she felt surely that she could not love him in return as he ought, as he deserved to be loved; and yet she did almost regret it. Then she began to ask herself why she did not, why she _could_ not love him, endowed eminently as he was with many high and noble qualities; and she was soon answered, when she considered how far he fell short of her standard, in mental and intellectual culture, in all that pertained to the secret sympathies of the heart, to the kindred tastes and sentiments, to that community of hopes and wishes, which, under the head of _eadem velle atque nolle_, the Roman philosophical historian has declared to be the sole base of true friendship, might he not better have said of true love. Thence by an easy and natural transition the girl’s thoughts turned to the young stranger—to his magnificent person and striking intellectual beauty—to his singular and original character, so audacious, so full of fiery and rebellious self-will, so confident in his own powers, so daring, almost insolent toward man, and yet, at the same time, so fraught with gentle and romantic fancies, so rapt by romance or poetry, so liable to all swift impressions of the senses, so humble, yet with so proud and self-arrogating a humility toward woman. She thought of the tones of his beautifully modulated voice, of the expression of his deep, clear, gray eye; she remembered how the one had melted, as it were, almost timorously in her ear, how the other had dwelt almost boldly on her face, yet with a boldness which seemed meant almost as homage.