wish for her own aggrandizement, yet, for her lover's sake, she fondly desires to be "trebled twenty times herself, a thousand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich." And while she bestows so profusely, and desires to possess in greater abundance that she may have the power to impart more munificently, how little she demands in return! Yes, little, if we set aside the playful, or coquettish exactions of her inborn, womanly caprice. Is it not little to be trustingly content with mere words; to be satisfied with assurances that she is beloved; to require no actions, no sacrifices as proofs of that passion? And what loving woman demands any? even at the moment when an irresistible impulse prompts her to offer the strongest evidences of her own self-abnegating, unmeasured, unbartered affection. Sometimes she even appears to rejoice in the trials that test the strength of her devotion; to glory in the opposition that proves its powers of resistance. No ordeal seems too great for her heroism to tempt. Wrapped in Love's protecting banner, she knows that she will pass through victoriously.
It is strange to see how quickly she merges her own identity into that of the man whom she loves; how involuntarily she lays aside her own volition, and looks with his eyes, and reflects his thoughts, and unknowingly illustrates to him the truth of Coleridge's declaration, that "love is the completion of our being in another."
