Long, I, shrinking, sideways turned to meet it, but could not; till some helping spirit seized me, and all my soul looked up at thee in my full-fronting face. It was enough. Fate was in that moment. All the loneliness of my life, all the choked longings of my soul, now poured over me. I could not away from them. Then first I felt the complete deplorableness of my state; that while thou, my brother, had a mother, and troops of aunts and cousins, and plentiful friends in city and in country—I, I, Isabel, thy own father's daughter, was thrust out of all hearts' gates, and shivered in the winter way. But this was but the least. Not poor Bell can tell thee all the feelings of poor Bell, or what feelings she felt first. It was all one whirl of old and new bewilderings, mixed and slanted with a driving madness. But it was most the sweet, inquisitive, kindly interested aspect of thy face,—so strangely like thy father's, too—the one only being that I first did love—it was that which most stirred the distracting storm in me; most charged me with the immense longings for some one of my blood to know me, and to own me, though but once, and then away. Oh, my dear brother—Pierre! Pierre!—couldst thou take out my heart, and look at it in thy hand, then thou wouldst find it all over written, this way and that, and crossed again, and yet again, with continual lines of longings, that found no end but in suddenly calling thee. Call him! Call him! He will come!—so cried my heart to me; so cried the leaves and stars to me, as I that night went home. But pride rose up—the very pride in my own longings,—and as one arm pulled, the other held. So I stood still, and called thee not. But Fate will be Fate, and it was fated. Once having met thy fixed regardful glance; once having seen the full angelicalness in thee, my whole soul was undone by thee; my whole pride was cut off at the root, and soon showed a blighting in the bud; which spread deep into
