will be filled.' I longed for your coming, and yet when you went I
murmured, 'But is this the ideal of which I have dreamed?' I asked for an
impossible sympathy. Sympathy with what? Nay, smile on me,
dearest!--sympathy with what? I could not have said. Ah, Allen, then,
then, I was not worthy of you! Infant that I was, I asked you to
understand me: now I know that I am a woman, and my task is to study you.
Do I make myself clear? Do you forgive me? I was not untrue to you; I
was untrue to my own duties in life. I believed, in my vain conceit, that
a mortal's dim vision of heaven raised me above the earth; I did not
perceive the truth that earth is a part of the same universe as heaven!
Now, perhaps, in the awful affliction that darkened my reason, my soul has
been made more clear. As if to chastise but to teach me, my soul has been
permitted to indulge its own presumptuous desire; it has wandered forth
from the trammels of mortal duties and destinies; it comes back, alarmed
by the dangers of its own rash and presumptuous escape from the tasks
which it should desire upon earth to perform. Allen, Allen, I am less
unworthy of you now! Perhaps in my darkness one rapid glimpse of the true
world of spirit has been vouchsafed to me. If so, how unlike to the
visions my childhood indulged as divine! Now, while I know still more
deeply that there is a world for the angels, I know, also, that the mortal
must pass through probation in the world of mortals. Oh, may I pass
through it with you, grieving in your griefs, rejoicing in your joy!"

Here language failed her. Again the dear arms embraced me, and the dear
face, eloquent with love, hid itself on my human breast.




CHAPTER LXXIX.