lieve; we have not changed. I cannot say
'You,' and if I may not say 'Thou,' then we must speak in English. Do
you understand me?"

I had not anticipated such a reception, for I saw here was no
masquerade--here was a soul which longed for another soul--here was a
greeting like that between two friends who recognize each other by the
glance of the eye, notwithstanding their disguises and dark masks. I
seized the hand she held out to me, and replied: "When we address an
angel, we cannot say 'You.'"

And yet how singular, is the influence of the forms and habits of life!
How difficult it is to speak the language of nature even to the most
congenial souls! Our conversation halted, and both of us felt the
embarrassment of the moment. I broke the silence and spoke out my
thoughts: "Men become accustomed to live from youth up as it were in a
cage, and when they are once in the open air they dare not venture to
use their wings, fearing, if they fly, that they may stumble against
everything."

"Yes," replied she, "and that is very proper and cannot well be
otherwise. One often wishes that he could live like the birds which
fly in the woods, and meet upon the branches and sing together without
being presented to each other. But, my friend, even among the birds
there are owls and sparrows, and in life it is well that one can pass
them without knowing them. It is sometimes with life as with poetry.
As the real poet can express the Truest and most Beautiful, although
fettered by metrical form, so man should know how to preserve freedom
of thought and feeling notwithstanding the restraints of society."

I could not help recalling the words of Platen: "That which proves
itself everlasting under all circumstances, told in the fetters of
words, is the unfettered spirit."

"Yes," said she, with a cordial but sweetly playful smile; "but I have
a privilege which is at the same time my burden and loneliness. I
often pity the young men and maidens, for they cannot have a friendship
or an intimacy without their relatives or themselves pronouncing it
love, or what they call love. They lose much on this account. The
maiden knows not what slumbers in her soul, and what might be awakened
by earnest conversation with a noble friend; and the young man in turn
would acquire so much knightly virtue if women were suffered to be the
distant witnesses of the inner struggles of the spirit. It will not
do, however, for immediately love c