ntil it
overflows.

Not see her again! I only live when I am with her. I will be calm; I
will not speak a word to her; I will only stand at her window as she
sleeps and dreams. But not to see her again! Not to take one farewell
from her! She knows not, they cannot know, that I love her. Surely I do
not love her--I desire nothing, I hope for nothing, my heart never beats
more quietly then when I am with her. But I must feel her presence--I
must breathe her spirit--I must go to her! She waits for me. Has
destiny thrown us together without design? Ought I not to be her
consolation, and ought she not to be my repose? Life is not a sport. It
does not force two souls together like the grains of sand in the desert,
which the sirocco whirls together and then asunder. We should hold fast
the souls which friendly fate leads to us, for they are destined for us,
and no power can tear them from us if we have the courage to live, to
struggle, and to die for them. She would despise me if I deserted her
love at the first roll of the thunder, as it were in the shadow of a
tree, under which I have dreamed so many happy hours.

Then I suddenly grew calm, and heard only the words "her love;" they
reverberated through all the recesses of my soul like an echo, and I was
terrified at myself. "Her love," and how had I deserved it? She hardly
knows me, and even if she could love me, must I not confess to her I do
not deserve the love of an angel? Every thought, every hope which arose
in my soul, fell back like a bird which essays to soar into the blue sky
and does not see the wires which restrain it. And yet, why all this
blissfulness, so near and so unattainable? Cannot God work wonders?
Does He not work wonders every morning? Has He not often heard my prayer
when it importuned him, and would not cease, until consolation and help
came to the weary one? These are not earthly blessings for which we
pray. It is only that two souls, which have found and recognized each
other, may be allowed to finish their brief life-journey, arm in arm, and
face to face; that I may be a support to her in suffering, and that she
may be a consolation and precious burden to me until we reach the end.
And if a still later spring were promised to her life, if her burdens
were taken from her--Oh, what blissful scenes crowded upon my vision!
The castle of her deceased mother, in the Tyrol, belonged to her. There,
on the green mountains, in the fr