pure air of mountains and the reflections of the snow give to the
complexion? Was it produced by the inward impulse which excites the
body at the instant when exertion is arrested? Did it come from the
sudden contrast between the glory of the sun and the darkness of the
clouds, from whose shadow the charming couple had just emerged?
Perhaps to all these causes we may add the effect of a phenomenon, one
of the noblest which human nature has to offer. If some able
physiologist had studied this being (who, judging by the pride on his
brow and the lightning in his eyes seemed a youth of about seventeen
years of age), and if the student had sought for the springs of that
beaming life beneath the whitest skin that ever the North bestowed
upon her offspring, he would undoubtedly have believed either in some
phosphoric fluid of the nerves shining beneath the cuticle, or in the
constant presence of an inward luminary, whose rays issued through the
being of Seraphitus like a light through an alabaster vase. Soft and
slender as were his hands, ungloved to remove his companion's
snow-boots, they seemed possessed of a strength equal to that which the
Creator gave to the diaphanous tentacles of the crab. The fire darting
from his vivid glance seemed to struggle with the beams of the sun,
not to take but to give them light. His body, slim and delicate as
that of a woman, gave evidence of one of those natures which are
feeble apparently, but whose strength equals their will, rendering
them at times powerful. Of medium height, Seraphitus appeared to grow
in stature as he turned fully round and seemed about to spring upward.
His hair, curled by a fairy's hand and waving to the breeze, increased
the illusion produced by this aerial attitude; yet his bearing, wholly
without conscious effort, was the result far more of a moral
phenomenon than of a corporal habit.

Minna's imagination seconded this illusion, under the dominion of