For the first time in her life Hester felt, nor knew what it was, a vague pang of jealousy. Whatever certain others may think, there are women who, having had their minds constantly filled with true and earnest things, have come for years to woman's full dignity, without having even speculated on what it may be to be in love. Such therefore are somewhat in the dark when first it begins to show itself within themselves: that it should be within them, they having never invited its presence, adds to their perplexity. She was silent, and Vavasor, whose experience was scarcely so valuable as her ignorance, judged he might venture a little farther. But with all his experience in the manufacture of compliments and in high-flown poetry, he was now at a loss; he had no fine theories of love to talk from! Love was with him, _at its best_, the something that preceded marriage--after which, whatever boys and girls might think, and although, of course, to a beautiful wife like Hester he could never imagine himself false, it must take its chance. But as he sat beside God's loveliest idea, exposed to the mightiest enchantment of life, little imagining it an essential heavenly decree for the redemption of the souls of men, he saw, for broken moments, and with half-dazed glimpses, into the eternal, and spoke as one in a gracious dream: "If one might sit forever thus!" he said, almost in a whisper,--"forever and ever, needing nothing, desiring nothing! lost in perfect, in absolute bliss! so peacefully glad that you do not want to know what other joy lies behind! so content, that, if you were told there was no other bliss, you would but say, 'I am the more glad; I want no other! I refuse all else! let the universe hear, and trouble me with none! This and nought else ought ever to be--on and on! to the far-away end. The very soul of me is music, and needs not the softest sound of earth to keep it alive.'" At that moment came a sigh of the night-wind, and bore to their ears the whispered moan of the stream away in the hollow, as it broke its being into voice over the pebbly troubles of its course. It came with a swell, and a faint sigh through the pines, and they woke and answered it with yet more ethereal voice. "Still! still!" said Vavasor, apostrophizing the river as if it were a live thing and understood him; "do not speak to me. I cannot attend even to your watery murmur. A sweeter music, born of the motions of my own spirit, fills my whole hearing. Be content with thy flowing, as I am content with my being. Would that God in the mercy of a God would make this moment eternal!" He ceased, and was silent.