emotions that evidently occupied each; but we each divined the other's
thought, and as our voices spoke of indifferent matters, our eyes, in mute
language, told a thousand things no tongue could have uttered.

They left me in an hour's time. They left me happy--how unspeakably
happy. It did not require the measured sounds of human language to syllable
the story of my extasy. Idris had visited me; Idris I should again and
again see--my imagination did not wander beyond the completeness of this
knowledge. I trod air; no doubt, no fear, no hope even, disturbed me; I
clasped with my soul the fulness of contentment, satisfied, undesiring,
beatified.

For many days Adrian and Idris continued to visit me thus. In this dear
intercourse, love, in the guise of enthusiastic friendship, infused more
and more of his omnipotent spirit. Idris felt it. Yes, divinity of the
world, I read your characters in her looks and gesture; I heard your
melodious voice echoed by her--you prepared for us a soft and flowery
path, all gentle thoughts adorned it--your name, O Love, was not spoken,
but you stood the Genius of the Hour, veiled, and time, but no mortal hand,
might raise the curtain. Organs of articulate sound did not proclaim the
union of our hearts; for untoward circumstance allowed no opportunity for
the expression that hovered on our lips. Oh my pen! haste thou to write what
was, before the thought of what is, arrests the hand that guides thee. If I
lift up my eyes and see the desart earth, and feel that those dear eyes
have spent their mortal lustre, and that those beauteous lips are silent,
their "crimson leaves" faded, for ever I am mute!

But you live, my Idris, even now you move before me! There was a glade, O
reader! a grassy opening in the wood; the retiring trees left its velvet
expanse as a temple for love; the silver Thames bounded it on one side, and