They were to be married in the spring. Now it was December. Meanwhile they had nothing to do but to make the most of the present. They saw each other nearly every day; and those days on which something prevented them from seeing each other, were very long and very dark days to Elias Bacharach. How did they amuse themselves? Innocently enough, and with no sort of difficulty. If an exhaustive account of their doings were reduced to writing, it would seem very trivial and very monotonous; but to them, basking in the light of new-born love, the trivial and the monotonous did not exist. High and low, far and wide, the world had been invested with the splendor, the mystery, and the majesty of the golden age. Yes, indeed: the period, long or short, during which first love holds sway over our hearts, tyrant though the ruler be, is notoriously our golden age, never to come but once. In this respect history does not repeat itself. Elias felt that each of his five senses had been sharpened, and that, moreover, he had acquired a sixth sense, a super-sense. The homeliest things, the most familiar sights, the commonest occurrences, took on a beauty, a significance, a suggestiveness, undreamed of until now. They aroused thoughts in his brain, emotions in his breast. He had used to regard New York as a somewhat sordid and unpicturesque metropolis: now he held it to be the most romantic city of the earth. Did she not dwell within its walls? Certainly, in former years, the Eighth Avenue horse-railway, with its dingy cars and shabby passengers, had had no special fascination for him; but now the bare mention of its name would rouse a sentimental tenderness in his bosom. Was not that the line by which he traveled when he went to see her? Everywhere he became aware of new aspects and new influences, to which heretofore his consciousness had been hermetically sealed. In a letter written by him to Christine at about this time--for, despite the frequency of their meetings, they found it necessary to keep the post-office busied on their behalf--Elias indulges in the following rhapsody: “I have waked up from a long sleep, a period of torpor, diversified by vague dreams, into fresh, keen, sensitive life. I have begun to love; and until one begins to love, one is only half born. Until one loves, half the faculties, half the activities, which one possesses, lie in a dormant state, are merely potential, latent. For love--is it not the very soul and life of life itself? I know a poem which says: 'Through love to light! Oh, wonderful the way, that leads from darkness to the perfect day!' That expresses exactly what I mean. The life I lived before I knew you, and began to love you, compared to the life I live now, as the dusk of early morning compares to the brilliant day that comes with the rising of the sun. Where there was chill, now there is warmth. Where there was silence, now there is music. Where there was gloom, now there is glory.