; until the inspiration of her visionary presence
wrought in my fancy with such a dramaturgic power, that I seemed to walk
daily with her, and to know all those delicate and sweet propinquities
by which liking passes into affection and affection is glorified into
love. So far did these happy day-dreams carry me, that they brought me
to the extreme of imaginary bliss, and poured out for me the wine of
untempered joy which thrills the hearts of lovers on the verge of their
betrothal. The dreams that followed that magic draught denied me no
convincing touch of circumstance, and projected upon a credible and
familiar scene the bright possibilities to which fate denied a real
existence. The scene was always the same, and the words and movements
which entranced me followed each other with almost religious exactitude
of detail which the adult demands of his day-dreams and the child of the
fairy-tale he loves.

It was always a June afternoon when we went out together, into the
meadows near her home; she moving with fluent grace as befitted a
daughter of the woods, her eyes indrawing joy from all nature, her hair
reflecting rich gold of the sunlight, her whole face lit with the
pleasure of a bright hour; I a mere satellite attendant upon its
central star. We strolled through the four home-meadows, crossed a
high-banked lane and a dingle with a brook running down it, and then
from an open common flooded with sunlight passed into a wood of tallest
beeches. In that cool, shadowy place the sun, searching a way through
crannies in the upper verdure, chequered with patches of silver light
the even mast-strewn floor. The multitude of smooth grey stems rose
aligned like cathedral columns; and the grateful dimness of the wood,
succeeding the glare of day, wakened a sense of purposed protection and
quietude pervading all things, which soothed the mind with the illusion
that this was a sacred spot appointed for an offering of souls. Near one
of those isles of sunlight we lingered; and as she looked up to the
source of light, the movement brought her face near the slanting shaft
of rays, until there was set round it an aureole of dancing beams. It
seemed to me at this part of my dream that there came to both of us some
gracious influence, for as her eyes met mine they dropped again, and
were fixed for a moment upon the wild flowers she carried. Then my heart
began to beat and my whole being to grow greater: impassioned words, to
that hour u