e. And now, enough has been said
between us. Why can't we part at once?' exclaimed she, almost wildly,
after a moment's pause, as she suddenly rose from her chair, with her
hands resolutely clasped together. I thought it was my duty to go
without delay; and I approached and half extended my hand as if to take
leave--she grasped it in silence. But this thought of final separation
was too intolerable: it seemed to squeeze the blood out of my heart; and
my feet were glued to the floor.

'And must we never meet again?' I murmured, in the anguish of my soul.

'We shall meet in heaven. Let us think of that,' said she in a tone of
desperate calmness; but her eyes glittered wildly, and her face was
deadly pale.

'But not as we are now,' I could not help replying. 'It gives me little
consolation to think I shall next behold you as a disembodied spirit, or
an altered being, with a frame perfect and glorious, but not like
this!--and a heart, perhaps, entirely estranged from me.'

'No, Gilbert, there is perfect love in heaven!'

'So perfect, I suppose, that it soars above distinctions, and you will
have no closer sympathy with me than with any one of the ten thousand
thousand angels and the innumerable multitude of happy spirits round us.'

'Whatever I am, you will be the same, and, therefore, cannot possibly
regret it; and whatever that change may be we know it must be for the
better.'

'But if I am to be so changed that I shall cease to adore you with my
whole heart and soul, and love you beyond every other creature, I shall
not be myself; and though, if ever I win heaven at all, I must, I know,
be infinitely better and happier than I am now, my earthly nature cannot
rejoice in the anticipation of such beatitude, from which itself and its
chief joy must be excluded.'

'Is your love all earthly, then?'

'No, but I am supposing we shall have no more intimate communion with
each other than with the rest.'

'If so, it will be because we love them more, and not each other less.
Increase of love brings increase of happiness, when it is mutual, and
pure as that will be.'

'But can you, Helen, contemplate with delight this prospect of losing me
in a sea of glory?'

'I own I cannot; but we know not that it will be so;--and I do know that
to regret the exchange of earthly pleasures for the joys of heaven, is as
if the grovelling caterpillar should lament that it must one day quit the
nibbled leaf to soar aloft and flut