"Yes--often and often," replied the maiden lifting her eyes to those
of Fenwick, and gazing at him with a tender expression.

"And yet few there are, Adelaide, few indeed who could share such
elevating pleasures."

"Few, indeed," was the response.

"Pardon me, for saying," resumed the young man, "that to you I have
been indebted for such added delights. Rarely, indeed, have I been
able to find, especially among your gentler sex, one who could rise
with me into the refining, elevating, exquisite pleasures of the
imagination. But you have seemed fully to appreciate my sentiments,
and fully to sympathize with them."

To this Adelaide held down her head for a moment or two, the
position causing the blood to deepen in her cheeks and forehead.
Then looking up with an expression of lofty poetic feeling she
said--

"And, until I met you, Mr. Fenwick, I must be frank in saying, that
I have known no one, whose current of thought and feeling--no one
whose love of the beautiful in the ideal or natural--has seemed so
perfect a reflection of my own."

To this followed another pause, longer and more thoughtful than the
first. It was at length broken by Fenwick, who said, in a voice that
trembled perceptibly.

"I have an inward consciousness, that sprung into activity when the