As he went along, his eye past swiftly from one object to another, seeking something to rest upon, which might fix his hurrying and dis- ordered thoughts. So fully had the notion possessed him that he was doomed to live with- out sympathy in the world, that the power was denied him to reveal to another what was in his heart, that his person, his manner, and all which made the outward man, barred him from any return of love, that the interest he discovered Esther to show in him, while it came like an uulooked for joy, brought with it doubt, humil- iation and pain. He thought what he must seem to be to another, and then distrusted the plainness and steadiness of her nature.—" There is not enough within them," said he, " for their minds to dwell upon ; there must be something outward and near to entertain their thoughts ; and their fickleness makes them careless how poor it is, so it will do for the time. She will go back to the world, and, amongst showy and accomplished men, will laugh secretly at herself, that such an one as I am ever quickened one beat of her heart. — Yet it may not be so ; souls may hold communion hidden and mysterious as their nature. Can looks and movements and voice like hers, all blending in harmony, speak any thing but truth ? Would that her heart lay open like a book to me, that I might read it and be satisfied !" He had walked on through brake and over crumbling moss, and was climbing up the shadowy side of a steep hill, when, reaching its brow, the whole sweep of the western sky opened upon him in full splendor, and he seemed in an instant standing on the verge of a new world, a world of light and glory. As he looked forward, all that lay between him and it sunk away, he felt himself expanding through the air, and becoming, as it were, one of the sons of light. But the spirit that lifted him up for a moment, passed like a bright cloud from him, a weight was on his soul heavier than the earth with all its hills, and reality breathed on him like the air of death. As he stood on the bare hill alone, and saw all beneath him making a fair society, the trees in brotherhood : — " Must I only," he cried, " of all the works of God, be an outcast ?" — He looked again upon the sky ; but the quiet clouds seemed to him to be telling of joy and peace to each other. His lip quivered as he leaned with folded arms, gazing on the setting sun. "The whole earth mourns thy going, thou gladdener of all things; thy light is poured out over it ; thou touchest the trees and the grass and the rocks, and they each answer thee ; thou fillest the air, and sounds are heard in it as if coming forth from thy very light ; and all mingle in thee as in one common spirit of cheerfulness and love." — The sun was now gone. He set himself down upon a stone, till the visionary twilight and shadows were lost in the common darkness. There was the same vagueness of purpose in his mind as when he left home, yet there was less tumult of the passions, and gentler feelings had entered him. As he turned to go homeward, the few stars that were coming out in the east cheered his spirit, hope gushed out in his heart like returning life, the affections were all in motion, and, for a while, the sense that he was in fellowship with his kind thrilled through him with rapture. Esther was at the door when Paul returned.— " What, alone ?" asked he. „ Yes, you have all deserted me." „ And can you feel deserted, Esther, who have the company of happy thoughts ?" „ All thoughts that we cannot share, in time turn to sadness.“ „ They do indeed, or to something worse than sadness— to discontent — almost to hate some- times." „ That is a fearful sin, in the solitude of our souls to grow in evil." „ It makes us mad almost," said be, his eyes shooting a wild light on her. His look and voice made her tremble. — "Paul, Paul," said she vehemently, „ what ails ye? Can a heart like yours find no sympathy in all this world ? Is there no one being to share in all its good- ness with you, and give it ease ?" " And with whom shall it find rest," he asked, looking earnestly at her.— Her eagerness had carried her too far; she blushed deeply, and stood silent before him. — The struggle with him- self was a severe one ; he had never laid open one deep feeling, and how could he make known that of love? At last he said, after a pause, „though of form and manners unwinning, and reserved, and seemingly cold and hard, I have at times been foolish enough to think that there was one being who could read something of my soul, and love me for what she found there. Tell me, Esther, was I mistaken, did I presume too far ?" " And do you ask me so doubtingly," said she, much moved, but looking up frankly at him, " to reprove me for speaking as I did in the warmth of my feelings ? You cannot think," she added, somewhat cast down, " that it was an artifice in me to hasten you to this. I did not consider that it was a freedom which ill suited me, and it came from an earnest heart, Paul." " My words were not those of reproof. O, Esther, it was said in the lowliness of a soul, which, though too often restless and proud, is at times humble as a worm. It is a trial of my faith in you to believe that you could ever love me with all your heart ; the world could hardly have persuaded me once, that a creature like you, made almost to be worshipped of men, could ever look in fondness on one like me."— He paused for a moment; then his manner changed suddenly. " But, but," he cried, hur- ried and vehemently, " so much as I doubt my powers to touch another's heart, so much the more, so much the more must I have assurance of her love." "Why so wild, Paul? What pledge can I give you, that I would not ?" " Ay, ay, but the pledge must not only be a sure one," said he, his manner growing still more vehement, — " it must be of a love which shall make me all in all. Can you," he cried, seizing her hand and wringing it hard, " have me in all your thoughts — make your whole soul mine ?" — She shook, and turned pale. She struggled to pass it off lightly ; but a tear was in her eye, as she said, with a forced smile — " Why, Paul, you are beside yourself! Any body might think I was making myself over to the Evil One, and not to the man that loves me." „ Forgive me, forgive me, Esther," he mur- mured in a choaked voice, throwing his arms round her neck and resting his hot brow on her shoulder, — " I — I feel myself sometimes too poor a thing for mortal regard ; and then, and then I could crawl into the earth. O, take me to you, and cherish me, and tell me that I am not wholly worthless — that you will love me." "Paul, Paul," said she, scarce articulately, " this is madness. You have brooded all alone over your melancholy thoughts, till they have bewildered you. If you care for me, shall I not make you happy ? Look up, and let a cheerful spirit enter you." — He lifted his head slowly from her shoulder, and stood gazing on her beautiful, tremulous countenance. — " O, you are an angel come in mercy to me. My spirit will never suffer so more." " This is too eager, Paul," said she, kindly. " Let your soul have rest, and try to be of a calmer mind." — And he was quiet. The heave and tossing of the feelings settled away, and he stood with thoughts as gentle as the moonlight which poured over them, as it came up in the east ; — for what spirit will not a woman's kind- ness calm ? At last Esther's father came to take her home. Paul was urged to join them; but a certain delicacy prevented his going for the first time to the house in company with the woman to whom he had been but a little while engaged ; and so, with an embarrassed and half uttered apology, he said he should soon follow them. He had time for only a word or two at her leaving him ; and yet he looked and spoke as if it would take ages to pour out what was in his soul. All the good affections in our nature seemed at work there — it was love, and pity, and parental care, and the heart-sickness of part- ing. As he put his arm gently round her, and looked in her face, there was in his manner more of the father, who is about parting with an only daughter for the first time, than of the lover. His voice was low, and thrilling, and admonitory. — „ You are going from me, Esther, for the first time since we met. A single and near object moves our affections strangely. In a little while you will be amongst those with whom you grew up ; and old sympathies of thought and feeling may return to you. Look carefully into your heart, Esther, and think it your best faith to me, to abide by what that tells you." „ And can you regard and love me, Paul," she said, turning her eyes upward to his with a prayerful look, " and judge me of so light and changeable a heart?" " No, Esther, but the very intenseness of love calls up misgivings ; and better I were left out on the bleak heath yonder, than be gathered to your bosom, to be thrown away again." They parted ; and though Esther loved him with a devoted spirit, she breathed more freely when out of his presence. He was dearer to her for his melancholy ; and his kind and fond man- ner, when his abstraction of mind was gone, touched her heart. Yet there was something fearful and ominous to her in his gloom ; and though she knew it had been caused by long solitude, and a mistaken estimate of the relation in which he might stand to others, still it was mysteriously foreboding to her, and there was an indistinct impression on the mind that some dreadful event, connected with it, awaited her. He followed with his eyes the daintily moving steeds and gay chariot, till a turn in the .road shut them out from his sight. — " They belong to what we call the elegancies of life," said he to himself. "There is much going under that term which serves to break up the thoughtful- ness of the mind, and what is native and sincere in the heart“ — He turned away, not only mel- ancholy, but dissatisfied and doubting. And now that he was alone again, and without the kind persuasions of Esther, his old depression and gloom were returning, and with them all the torture that doubting minds undergo in love. Sometimes he saw her before him with the dis- tinctness almost of real presence ; her voice and countenance beautifully touched with her fond- ness for him ; and then again he remembered her cheerful, social spirit, and he was driven from her thoughts by those who were strangers to him. And a thousand times a day be would ask himself, " is she thinking of me now, or is she busy amidst the millions of things which waste our time and draw to them our wishes and hopes, yet have nothing abiding in them like the nature of our souls ?" These conjectures and sad reflections were now to give way to feelings immediate, active and intense; for Paul set off from home and soon reached Mr. Waring's. Unless a man has met, after a long or distant separation, the woman who loves him with all her heart , he never saw the soul shine out in the countenance in all its glow and beauty. So thought Paul when they met. And as Esther looked on him, his face, too, was changed like the edge of a cloud by the shining of the sun upon it : And she felt that no joy is like her joy who reads such silent tokens of love return- ed, heart answering to heart, and thanks for the deep gladness she has given. The house of Esther's father, whither Paul had come, was situated but a few miles from the city, in a pleasant village, made up chiefly of people of wealth and fashion. Though Mr. Waring's fortune was not as large as many of his neighbours', as he had no child but Esther he was able to gratify his fondness for company and gay life, and had made them agreeable to her from early habit. She loved society the better, also, because she made it pleasant, and not for the reason that those do who are as dull com- pany to others as to themselves. The consequence of all this was, that Paul and she had fewer hours together, than when at his father's. He was shy of being near her in company, and to talk with the woman to whom he was known to be engaged, before strangers, would have been martyrdom to him. He found that her countenance brightened and spirits rose high in society. Her gay laugh and cheerful voice was like the hissing of an adder in his ear. He was pained and made uneasy, because he saw her taken up with that in which he felt himself unfitted to hold a part. She was giving delight and receiving it in return, and he could not share in it. He would stand aside and watch her, till he fancied that her look and tone of voice were the same with which she looked on and talked with him. His mind was in a peculiar degree single. [Whatever passion or thought was in him, it filled him entirely ; and now that it was love, all in the world that held not connexion with that was as nothing to him ; he neither heard, nor saw, nor felt any thing that concerned not his love for Esther. The alacrity with which she entered into whatever was going on, was to him a want of steadiness of mind and depth of feeling. He understood nothing of those to whom the passion of love gives a gay spirit-— a feeling of kindness and fellowship towards all the world— from whom, as it grows fuller and more intense, it sends forth something of its bright influences over all things :— In him it was a self-absorbing and lonely fire, flaring only through the recesses of his own soul, and shin- ing alone upon his own solitary thoughts. " And has God given them another constitution of mind also?" said he to himself one night, as he left the room, too restless to stay any longer. " Have they no fastnesses nor places of rest to come home to ? Day and night are they on the wing and never tire. The bird that passed over me just now, and called to me out of the dark- ness, though he make himself companion of the stars the night long, will go to his nest by morn- ing. — I would not be a thing to lay my heart open to the common eye. Its beatings warm me the more, to think that I can be in the midst of men, and they not count its pulses. Rather than lie out forever siftining in the day, I would be covered up in my grave."— Paul could not accuse Esther to himself, without a feeling of compunction. This did not drive away his doubts, but made him turn some of the impatience he felt, upon her. Yet in the midst of it, the truth of her character would appear to him in all its fair simplicity, and his adoring spirit would look up to her as something set apart and sacred. Her, spirits were in full flow when Paul left the room ; for it gave animation and cheerfulness to her in all she did, when she thought he saw her. The conversation began to flag; she turned to look for him, but he was gone. She remembered that a feeling like depression had been gradually gaining on her, and a superstitious thought crossed her, that she had been mysteri- ously conscious of missing something, she knew not what, though she did not before perceive he had gone. She grew silent, the company with- drew, the family retired to rest, and she was left alone. It was midnight, and Paul had not returned. There was no sound in the house. She raised the window and looked out. It was a black, misty night, and there was that intense stillness abroad, which, at such a time, is felt by us as a supernatural presence, and makes us think of death. She scarcely breathed as she listened for his footstep, and the beatings of her heart struck upon her ear like a distant bell. At last she heard him as he came round the house, and the blood bounded through her frame. — " Paul !" she cried, and her silver voice rang in the still air. Paul entered, — " Where have you been, you runaway," said she, springing lightly towards him,— "to give me the heartach for two long hours,— and all in the chilly night fog, too. See," said she, running her fingers playfully through his coarse, glossy, black hair, on which the dampness stood in drops— "these pearls, shall all be mine, and make me a happy girl again." " They will not be the first that have eased a Woman's heart, Esther. Come, come, these are no brown curls to ring the white fingers of a fair hand." " I thought to cheer you," said she, drawing back, " I am sorry it offends you." " Did I speak harshly, Esther ? If I did, it was far from what I feel." „Not harshly, but mournfully, and as if I had given you cause ; and to think so is harder to bear, than what comes from an over hasty temper." " I am glad to hear you say so, for that is one of the many tokens whereby we find out love." „And are you in search of mine still ? I had thought it bad been yours long ago." " And I think so too, Esther ; but then it can rest only on our belief, and upon that there will always be hanging some ugly shred of doubt." " O ! I had thought it was a faith," said she, " not to speak profanely— a faith that surpasseth knowledge that it was in us as our consciousness, our very life. Is it folly in me to think so ?" „ No, Esther, it is your virtue. Bad as I am, I have moments of much blessedness — and this, this is one of them ; — it is on me now," he cried in a broken laugh. She started from him as from a deranged man. — " Be not alarmed," said he, seizing her arm, and looking on her eagerly, but with a melancholy smile, " I am not mad, not quite mad, though joy shoots through me sometimes like fire." „I wish it might burn in you gently and constantly, Paul, for then I should see you a happy man ; and I would die to night and give over all my love for you — if love must die with us— could I but leave you happy." She covered her face, and sobbed as if all comfort had forsa- ken her. " O, Esther, I am not worthy this ; I'm so poor a thing I ought not to make you unhappy even.— That was an evil time in which you saw me first. When I was alone, I went about the earth as a doomed thing ; and now that I am connected with my kind, the curse that was on me singly, seems to be stretching out over all in communion with me. When I see you happy, my heart aches for you, to think how heedless you are of the hour that is waiting you.' „ And what hour have I to fear, Paul, but the hour of death which is to part us ?" " I cannot tell ; only I have lived impressed from the time I was a boy, that it was writ I should be miserable. And when I see you happy, you look to me like a star trailing your glory across my gloom only to fall and go out in it. Better, I fear, that I should have lived on in darkness, than that your light should ever have shone on me. O, I talk ! No more of this now. The morning will overtake us. You look pale and heart-sunken. Let me not make your hour of rest miserable, Esther. Think this, as I hope it is, but the boding of midnight. To-morrow I´ll be as cheerful as the lightest of them. Sweet sleep comfort you. And now, my love, good night. ' — Esther looked at him, melancholy, yet something cheered, but she could not speak as they parted. For several days, Paul's affectionate manner was not broken by any sudden starts or gloomy reserve ; and if after a time these returned upon him, it was seldomer ; and his disposition seemed softened and quieted. The day was coming that Esther was to be his wife ; and as it drew near, he felt more surely how deeply rooted she was in his heart.
