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CHAPTER IV.
IS there such a feeling as love at first sight? And if there be, in what
does its nature differ from love founded in long observation and slow
growth? Perhaps its effects are not so permanent; but they are, while they
last, as violent and intense. We walk the pathless mazes of society, vacant
of joy, till we hold this clue, leading us through that labyrinth to
paradise. Our nature dim, like to an unlighted torch, sleeps in formless
blank till the fire attain it; this life of life, this light to moon, and
glory to the sun. What does it matter, whether the fire be struck from
flint and steel, nourished with care into a flame, slowly communicated to
the dark wick, or whether swiftly the radiant power of light and warmth
passes from a kindred power, and shines at once the beacon and the hope. In
the deepest fountain of my heart the pulses were stirred; around, above,
beneath, the clinging Memory as a cloak enwrapt me. In no one moment of
coming time did I feel as I had done in time gone by. The spirit of Idris
hovered in the air I breathed; her eyes were ever and for ever bent on
mine; her remembered smile blinded my faint gaze, and caused me to walk as
one, not in eclipse, not in darkness and vacancy--but in a new and
brilliant light, too novel, too dazzling for my human senses. On every
leaf, on every small division of the universe, (as on the hyacinth ai is
engraved) was imprinted the talisman of my existence--SHE LIVES! SHE IS!
--I had not time yet to analyze my feeling, to take myself to task, and
leash in the tameless passion; all was one idea, one feeling, one knowledge
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