were some nun-like cousin immovably vowed to dwell with thee in thy strange exile. Show not to me,—never show more any visible conscious token of love. I will never to thee. Our mortal lives, oh, my heavenly Pierre, shall henceforth be one mute wooing of each other; with no declaration; no bridal; till we meet in the pure realms of God's final blessedness for us;—till we meet where the ever-interrupting and ever-marring world cannot and shall not come; where all thy hidden, glorious unselfishness shall be gloriously revealed in the full splendour of that heavenly light; where, no more forced to these cruellest disguises, she, she too shall assume her own glorious place, nor take it hard, but rather feel the more blessed, when, there, thy sweet heart shall be openly and unreservedly mine. Pierre, Pierre, my Pierre!—only this thought, this hope, this sublime faith now supports me. Well was it, that the swoon, in which thou didst leave me, that long eternity ago—well was it, dear Pierre, that though I came out of it to stare and grope, yet it was only to stare and grope, and then I swooned again, and then groped again, and then again swooned. But all this was vacancy; little I clutched; nothing I knew; 'twas less than a dream, my Pierre, I had no conscious thought of thee, love; but felt an utter blank, a vacancy;—for wert thou not then utterly gone from me? and what could there then be left of poor Lucy?—But now, this long, long swoon is past; I come out again into life and light; but how could I come out, how could I any way be, my Pierre, if not in thee? So the moment I came out of the long, long swoon, straightway came to me the immortal faith in thee, which though it could offer no one slightest possible argument of mere sense in thy behalf, yet was it only the more mysteriously imperative for that, my Pierre. Know then, dearest Pierre, that
