Vincent had no resource but to let himself out of the shabby little room which this strange woman inhabited as if it had been a palace. The momentary alarm roused by her last words, and the state of half offence, half interest, into which, notwithstanding his pre-occupation, she had managed to rouse him, died away, however, as he re-entered the poor little street, which was now a road in Fairyland instead of a lane in Carlingford, to his rapt eyes. Golden traces of those celestial wheels surely lingered still upon the way, they still went rolling and echoing over the poor young minister's heart, which he voluntarily threw down before that heavenly car of Juggernaut. Every other impression faded out of his mind, and the infatuated young man made no effort of resistance, but hugged the enchanted chain. He had seen Her--spoken with Her--henceforward was of her acquaintance. He cast reason to the winds, and probability, and every convention of life. Did anybody suppose that all the world leagued against him could prevent him from seeing her again? He went home with an unspeakable elation, longing, and excitement, and at the same time with a vain floating idea in his mind that, thus inspired, no height of eloquence was impossible to him, and that triumph of every kind was inevitable. He went home, and got his writing-desk, and plunged into his lecture, nothing doubting that he could transfer to his work that glorious tumult of his thoughts; and, with his paper before him, wrote three words, and sat three hours staring into the roseate air, and dreaming dreams as wild as any Arabian tale. Such was the first effort of that chance encounter, in which the personages were not Lady Western and the poor Dissenting minister, but Beauty and Love, perennial hero and heroine of the romance that never ends. CHAPTER VI.