beseech you, never seek to know it! But this I know, that it is the
most supreme and entire happiness that the soul of one created being
can draw from the soul, the eyes, and the voice of another being like
to herself, of a being who till now was wanting to her happiness, and
of whom she completes the existence. Besides this boundless happiness,
this mutual response of thought to thought, of heart to heart, of soul
to soul, which blends them in one indivisible existence, and makes them
as inseparable as the ray of yonder setting sun, and the beam of yonder
rising moon, when they meet in this same sky, and ascend in mingled
light in the same ether--is there another joy, gross image of the one I
feel, as far removed from the eternal and immaterial union of our souls
as dust is from these stars, or a minute from eternity? I know not! and
I will not, cannot know!" she added in a tone of disdainful sadness.
"But," she resumed, with a confiding look and attitude, which seemed to
make her wholly mine, "what do words signify? I love you! All nature
would say it for me, if I did not; or rather, let me proclaim it first,
for both: We love each other!"

"Oh, say, say it once more, say it a thousand times," I exclaimed,
rising like a madman, and walking backwards and forwards in the boat,
which shook beneath my feet. "Let us say it together, say it to God and
man, say it to heaven and earth, say it to the mute, unheeding
elements! Say it eternally, and let all nature repeat it eternally with
us!" ... I fell on my knees before her, with my hands clasped, and my
disordered hair falling over my face. "Be calm," she said, placing her
fingers on my lips, "and let me speak without interruption to the end."
I sat down and remained silent.

"I have said," she resumed, "or rather I have not said, I have called
out to you from the depths of my soul, that I love you! I love with all