only
recreation they permitted themselves. There was a fascination in this
existence that made all their previous life, happy as it had been, seem
tame and worthless in comparison. If real power have an irresistible
charm for those who have once enjoyed its prerogatives, even the
semblance and panoply of it have a marvellous fascination.

That _egoisme-a-deux_, as a witty French writer has called love, was
also heightened in its attraction by the notion of an influence and
sway wielded in concert. As one of the invariable results of the
great passion is to elevate people to themselves, so did this seeming
importance they thus acquired minister to their love for each other. In
the air-built castles of their mind one was a royal palace, surrounded
with all the pomp and splendour of majesty; who shall say that here was
not a theme for a 'thousand-and-one nights,' of imagination?

Must we make the ungraceful confession that Gerald was not very much in
love! though he felt that the life he was leading was a very delightful
one. Guglia possessed great--the very greatest--attractions. She was
very beautiful; her figure the perfection of grace and symmetry; her
carriage, voice and air all that the most fastidious could wish for.
She was eminently gifted in many ways, and with an apprehension of
astonishing quickness; and yet, somehow, though he liked and admired
her, was always happy in her society, and charmed by her companionship,
she never made the subject of his solitary musings as he strolled
by himself; she was not the theme of the sonnets that fell half
unconsciously from his lips as he rambled alone in the pine wood. Was
the want then in _her_ to inspire a deeper passion, or had the holiest
spot in _his_ heart been already occupied, or was it that some ideal
conception had made all reality unequal and inferior?

We smile at the simplicity of those poor savages, who having carved
out their own deity, fashioned, and shaped, and clothed, then fall down
before their own handiwork in an abject devotion and worship. We cannot
reconcile to ourselves the mental process by which this self-deception
is practised, and yet it is happening in another form, and every day
too, under our own eyes. The most violent passions are very often
the result of a certain suggestiveness in an object much admired; the
qualities which awaken in ourselves nobler sentiments, higher ambitions,
and more delightful dreams of a future soon attach us t