those immortals he told her she resembled. She felt as
though she trod on air, as though she drank the sunbeams and they gave
her force like wine; she had no sense of fatigue; she might have had
wings at her ankles, and nectar in her veins. She was so happy, with
that perfect happiness which only comes where the world cannot enter,
and the free nature has lifted itself to the light, knowing nothing of,
and caring nothing for, the bonds of custom and of prejudice with which
men have paralysed and cramped themselves, calling the lower the higher
law.

* * *

The world was so far from her; she knew not of it; she was a law to
herself, and her whole duty seemed to her set forth in one single word,
perhaps the noblest word in human language--fidelity. When life is cast
in solitary places, filled with high passions, and led aloof from men,
the laws which are needful to curb the multitudes, but yet are poor
conventional foolish things at their best, sink back into their true
signification, and lose their fictitious awe.

* * *

Moreover, love is for ever measureless, and the deepest and most
passionate love is that which survives the death of esteem.

Friendship needs to be rooted in respect, but love can live upon itself
alone. Love is born of a glance, a touch, a murmur, a caress; esteem
cannot beget it, nor lack of esteem slay it. _Questi che mai da me non
fia diviso_, shall be for ever its consolation amidst hell. One life
alone is beloved, is beautiful, is needful, is desired: one life alone
out of all the millions of earth. Though it fall, err, betray, be mocked
of others and forsaken by itself, what does this matter? This cannot
alter love. The more it is injured by itself, derided of men, abandoned
of God, the more will love still see that it has need of love, and to
the faithless will be faithful.

* * *

He stood mute and motionless awhile. Then as the truth was borne in on
him, tears gushed from his eyes like rain, and he laughed long, and
laughed loud as madmen do.

He never doubted her.

He sprang up the stone steps, and leapt into the open air: into that
light of day which he had been forbidden to see so long.

To stand erect there, to look over the plains, to breathe, and move, and
gaze, and stretch his arms out to the infinite spaces of the sea and
sky--this alone was so intense a joy that he felt mad with it.

Never again to hide with the s