comprehend unless they
know love as a fierce and all-invading tyrant whose mildest symptom is
a monstrous jealousy, a perpetual desire to snatch away the beloved from
every other influence.

"What!" thought he to himself, "she has seen visitors, she has been
with happy creatures, and talking to them, while I was unhappy and all
alone."

He buried his annoyance forthwith, and consigned love to the depths of
his heart, like a coffin to the sea. His thoughts were of the kind that
never find expression in words; they pass through the mind swiftly as
a deadly acid, that poisons as it evaporates and vanishes. His brow,
however, was over-clouded; and Mme. d'Aiglemont, guided by her woman's
instinct, shared his sadness without understanding it. She had hurt him,
unwittingly, as Vandenesse knew. He talked over his position with her,
as if his jealousy were one of those hypothetical cases which lovers
love to discuss. Then the Marquise understood it all. She was so deeply
moved, that she could not keep back the tears--and so these lovers
entered the heaven of love.

Heaven and Hell are two great imaginative conceptions formulating our
ideas of Joy and Sorrow--those two poles about which human existence
revolves. Is not heaven a figure of speech covering now and for
evermore an infinite of human feeling impossible to express save in its
accidents--since that Joy is one? And what is Hell but the symbol of
our infinite power to suffer tortures so diverse that of our pain it is
possible to fashion works of art, for no two human sorrows are alike?

One evening the two lovers sat alone and side by side, silently watching
one of the fairest transformations of the sky, a cloudless heaven taking
hues of pale gold and purple from the last rays of the sunset. With the
slow fading of the daylight, sweet thoughts seem to awaken, and soft
stirrings of passion, and a mysterious sense of trouble in the midst of
calm. Nature sets before us vague images of bliss, bidding us enjoy
the happiness within our reach, or lament it when it has fled. In those
moments fraught with enchantment, when the tender light in the canopy
of the sky blends in harmony with the spells working within, it is
difficult to resist the heart's desires grown so magically potent. Cares
are blunted, joy becomes ecstasy; pain, intolerable anguish. The pomp
of sunset gives the signal for confessions and draws them forth. Silence
grows more dangerous than speech for it gives