, most agreeable man I ever met,' said I. 'Is
he your lover, Jacqueline? Are you going to marry him?'

"She turned about from the vase which she was denuding of its flowers,
and gave me one of her sphinx-like looks. 'You must ask papa,' said she.
'He holds the destinies of the Japhas in his hand, does he not?'

"'Does he?' I involuntarily whispered to myself; following the steady
poise of her head and the assured movements of her graceful form, with a
glance of doubt, but loving her all the same, O loving her all and ever
the same!

"'Your father is not the man to cross you when the object of your
affections is as worthy as this gentleman. He loved your mother too
fondly.'

"'He did?' She had turned quick as a flash and was looking me straight
in the eyes.

"'I never saw such union!' I exclaimed, vaguely remembering that her
mother's name had always seemed to have power to move her. 'There was no
parade of it before the world; but here at their own fireside, it was
heart to heart and soul to soul. It was not love it was assimilation.'

"The young girl rose upon me like a flame; her very eyes seemed to dart
fire; her lips looked like living coals; she was almost appalling in her
terrible beauty and superhuman passion. 'Not love!' she exclaimed, her
every word falling like a burning spark, 'not love but assimilation! Yet
do you suppose if I told my father that my soul had found its mate; my
heart its other half; that this, _this_ nature,' here she struck her
breast as she would a stone, 'had at last found its master; that the
wayward spirit of which you have sometimes been afraid, was become a
part of another's life, another's soul, another's hope, do you suppose
he would listen? Hush!' she cried, seeing me about to speak. 'You talk
of love, what do you know of it, what does he know of it, who saw his
young wife die, yet himself consented to live? Is love a sitting by the
fire with hand locked in hand while the winter winds rage and the
droning kettle sings? Love is a going through the fire, a braving of the
winter winds, a scattering of the soul in sparks that the night and the
tempest lick up without putting out the germ of the eternal flame.
Love!' she half laughed; 'O, it takes a soul that has never squandered
its treasure upon every passing beggar, to know how to love! Do you see
that star?' It was night as I have said and we were standing near an
open window. 'It has lost its moorings and is falling; when it d