When she entered I felt as if happiness came with her. Doubtless my eyes
betrayed this distinctly enough, though I forced my lips to silence; for
what love had she, before whom life was opening like a path through a
blooming garden, to bestow on the invalid cousin who was probably
destined to an early death, and certainly to many a year of illness?
At our first meeting I felt that I loved her, but for that very reason
I desired to conceal it.

I had grown modest. It was enough for me to gaze at her, hear her dear
voice, and sometimes--she was my cousin--clasp her little hand.

Science was now the object of my devotion. My intellect, passion, and
fire were all hers. A kind fortune seemed to send me Nenny in order to
bestow a gift also upon the heart, the soul, the sense of beauty.

This state of affairs could not last; for no duty commanded her to share
the conflict raging within me, and a day came when I learned from her own
lips that she loved me, that her heart had been mine when she was a
little school-girl, that during my illness she had never wearied of
praying for me, and had wept all night long when the physician told her
mother of the danger in which I stood.

This confession sounded like angel voices. It made me infinitely happy,
yet I had strength to entreat Nenny to treasure this blissful hour with
me as the fairest jewel of our lives, and then help me to fulfil the duty
of parting from her.

But she took a different view of the future. It was enough for her to
know that my heart was hers. If I died young, she would follow me.