ply read in literature. He loved poetry with passionate ardor. All
English poetry was familiar to him. The early English metrical
romance, Chaucer, Spenser, the Elizabethan dramatists, Waller,
Marvell, and Cowley, Lovelace and Suckling, were all appreciated
fully. He had admiration for the poets of the Restoration; he had no
words to express the adoration which he felt for Milton; Gray and
Collins he knew by heart; Thomson and Cowper he could mention with
appreciation; while the great school of the Revolutionary poets
rivaled all the rest in the admiration which they extorted from him.
Tennyson and the Brownings were, however, most in his thoughts; and
as these were equally dear to Zillah, they met on common ground. What
struck Zillah most was the fact that occasional stray bits, which she
had seen in magazines, and had treasured in her head, were equally
known, and equally loved by this man, who would repeat them to her
with his full melodious voice, giving thus a new emphasis and a new
meaning to words whose meaning she thought she already felt to the
full. In these was a deeper meaning, as Windham said them, than she
had ever known before. He himself seemed to have felt the meaning of
some of these. What else could have caused that tremulous tone which,
in its deep musical vibrations, made these words ring deep within her
heart? Was there not a profounder meaning in the mind of this man,
whose dark eyes rested upon hers with such an unfathomable depth of
tenderness and sympathy--those eyes which had in them such a magnetic
power that even when her head was turned away she could _feel_ them
resting upon her, and knew that he was looking at her--with what deep
reverence! with what unutterable longing! with what despair! Yes,
despair. For on this man's face, with all the reverence and longing
which it expressed, there was never any hope, there was never any
look of inquiry after sympathy; it was mute reverence--silent
adoration; the look that one may cast upon a divinity, content with
the offer of adoration, but never dreaming of a return.

The days flew by like lightning. Zillah passed them in a kind of
dream. She only seemed awake when Windham came. When he left, all was
barrenness and desolation. Time passed, but she thought nothing of
Naples. Obed had explained to her the necessity of waiting at
Marseilles till fresh news should come from Hilda, and had been
surprised at the ease with which she had been persuaded to