conveyed. They spoke of Greece; this was a theme on which Ione loved
rather to listen than to converse: it was a theme on which the Greek
could have been eloquent for ever. He described to her the silver olive
groves that yet clad the banks of Ilyssus, and the temples, already
despoiled of half their glories--but how beautiful in decay! He looked
back on the melancholy city of Harmodius the free, and Pericles the
magnificent, from the height of that distant memory, which mellowed into
one hazy light all the ruder and darker shades. He had seen the land of
poetry chiefly in the poetical age of early youth; and the associations
of patriotism were blended with those of the flush and spring of life.
And Ione listened to him, absorbed and mute; dearer were those accents,
and those descriptions, than all the prodigal adulation of her
numberless adorers. Was it a sin to love her countryman? she loved
Athens in him--the gods of her race, the land of her dreams, spoke to
her in his voice! From that time they daily saw each other. At the
cool of the evening they made excursions on the placid sea. By night
they met again in Ione's porticoes and halls. Their love was sudden,
but it was strong; it filled all the sources of their life.
Heart--brain--sense--imagination, all were its ministers and priests.
As you take some obstacle from two objects that have a mutual
attraction, they met, and united at once; their wonder was, that they
had lived separate so long. And it was natural that they should so
love. Young, beautiful, and gifted--of the same birth, and the same
soul--there was poetry in their very union. They imagined the heavens
smiled upon their affection. As the persecuted seek refuge at the
shrine, so they recognized in the altar of their love an asylum from the
sorrows of earth; they covered it with flowers--they knew not of the
serpents that lay coiled behind.

One evening, the fifth after their first meeting at Pompeii, Glaucus and