“Yes, I will. I will repress this feeling of reluctance, and tell you all my thoughts. Yes, for surely I feel you have a right to have an answer to any question you ask me, my higher self. Listen, then. Bend low, for I shall whisper very low, lest the air around should hear me. When you first drew me on to love you, when leaf by leaf my heart unfolded and developed under the life-giving warmth of your eyes, of your touch, just as a rose buds and blossoms under the rays of its sovereign, the sun—my heart, I mean, or something rising within it—taught me many mysteries that neither prophet, priest, nor sage could have taught me. Among other things, it revealed to me the knowledge of all that would please and all that would displease you in myself, and impelled me to follow the first and eschew the last. It made me wish to isolate myself for you. It killed the very first germ of vanity in my heart, and made me wish that none should come near enough to me to know whether I were beautiful or otherwise, far less so near as to tell me of it. It made me shrink from all those little gallantries from gentlemen which make up so large a portion of a belle’s life. I was so afraid of being found unworthy of you when you should take me. I should not have felt good enough for you if my hand, that awaited your hand, had been squeezed and kissed, and my waist, that awaited the dear girdle of this arm—fold it closer around me now—had been pressed, and I, your expectant bride, had been twined and whirled about in the giddy waltz. But none of these things have happened to me. I come to you almost an Oriental bride for exclusiveness, and that makes me so happy. I should have else been unhappy, should else have been unworthy of you.” All this was murmured slowly, softly, dreamily, as though the truth stole out of a slumbering heart, while she lay upon his bosom, and the last words were breathed forth in an almost inaudible sigh. But he answered with passionate vehemence, clasping her to his heart: “Unworthy of me! You! so beautiful! so good! so intellectual!—save when your highest intellect is whelmed in feeling!—yet, no—your highest intelligence—your spirit—is never so whelmed! You, the heiress of the haughtiest family in Maryland—and I—who am I?” “My greater self! my life-giver!—by these titles only I know you. Does my rank and fortune offend you? Pluck me away from them; for I am yours. Bury me with yourself, in some lone forest cabin, in the wilderness, whither your footsteps tend; and there my hunter’s wife will forget the world, while preparing the cabin for his return at eve. And she will not think the hours of his absence long, for they will be filled with fervent thoughts of him. Oh, that hunter’s lodge in the wild! I see it even in my dreams!” And this was not romance; but the passionate fanaticism of first, of early love. “Oh, Elsie! how you talk!” he exclaimed, gazing on her eloquent face with wonder, reverence, and passion.