"better than a thousand months!"

Drawn to her by some subtle mysterious attraction which he could
neither explain nor control, and absorbed in a rapture beyond all
that his highest and most daring flights of poetical fancy had
ever conceived, he felt as though his very life were ebbing out of
him to become part of hers, and this thought was strangely sweet,
--a perfect consummation of all his best desires! ...

All at once a cold shudder ran freezingly through his veins,--a
something chill and impalpable appeared to pass between him and
her caressing arms--his limbs grew numb and heavy--his sight began
to fail him ... he was sinking ... sinking, he knew not
where, when suddenly she withdrew herself from his embrace.
Instantly his strength came back to him with a rush--he sprang to
his feet and stood erect, breathless, dizzy, and confused--his
pulses beating like hammer-strokes and every fiber in his frame
quivering with excitement.

Entranced, impassioned, elated,--filled with unutterable
incomprehensible joy, he would have clasped her again to his
heart,--but she retreated swiftly from him, and standing several
paces off, motioned him not to approach her more nearly. He
scarcely heeded her warning gesture, ... plunging recklessly
through the flowers he had almost reached her side, when to his
amazement and fear, his eager progress was stopped!

Stopped by some invisible, intangible barrier, which despite all
his efforts, forcibly prevented him from advancing one step
further,--she was close within an arm's length of him--and yet he