ust leaped out of the fountain,
and can hardly be said to have begun its course. Well! may Heaven smile
on it! But tell me about that course of love which made you sigh as you
did just now."

"What can I tell you about it? And yet, you shall know, if you like,
how it appears to me."

"Oh, tell me! I shall see whether you would have understood Hester's
case."

"The first strange thing is, that every woman approaches this crisis of
her life as unawares as if she were the first that ever loved."

"And yet all girls are brought up to think of marriage as almost the
only event in life. Their minds are stuffed with thoughts of it almost
before they have had time to gain any other ideas."

"Merely as means to ends low enough for their comprehension. It is not
marriage--wonderful, holy, mysterious marriage--that their minds are
full of, but connection with somebody or something which will give them
money, and ease, and station, and independence of their parents. This
has nothing to do with love. I was speaking of love--the grand
influence of a woman's life, but whose name is a mere empty sound to her
till it becomes, suddenly, secretly, a voice which shakes her being to
the very centre--more awful, more tremendous, than the crack of doom."

"But why? Why so tremendous?"

"From the struggle which it calls upon her to endure, silently and
alone;--from the agony of a change of existence which must be wrought
without any eye perceiving it. Depend upon it, Margaret, there is
nothing in death to compare with this change; and there can be nothing
in entrance upon another state which can transcend the experience I
speak of. Our powers can but be taxed to the utmost. Our being can but
be strained till not another effort can be made. This is all that we
can conceive to happen in death; and it happens in love, with the
additional burden of fearful secrecy. One may lie down and await death,
with sympathy about one to the last, though the passage hence must be
solitary; and it would be a small trouble if all the world looked on to
see the parting of soul and body: but that other passage into a new
state, that other process of becoming a new creature, must go on in the
darkness of the spirit, while the body is up and abroad, and no one must
know what is passing within. The spirit's leap from heaven to hell must
be made while the smile is on the lips, and light words are upon the
tongue. The struggles of shame, the pan