And then--and then--all jealousy, all sadness vanished, and I felt the glory which blends with the growing belief that we are loved.
In that diviner epoch of man's mysterious passion, when ideas of perfection and purity, vague and fugitive before, start forth and concentre themselves round one virgin shape,--that rises out from the sea of creation, welcomed by the Hours and adorned by the Graces,--how the thought that this archetype of sweetness and beauty singles himself from the millions, singles himself for her choice, ennobles and lifts up his being! Though after-experience may rebuke the mortal's illusion, that mistook for a daughter of Heaven a creature of clay like himself, yet for a while the illusion has grandeur.

Though it comes from the senses which shall later oppress and profane it, the senses at first shrink into shade, awed and hushed by the presence that charms them.

All that is brightest and best in the man has soared up like long-dormant instincts of Heaven, to greet and to hallow what to him seems life's fairest dream of the heavenly! Take the wings from the image of Love, and the god disappears from the form! Thus, if at moments jealous doubt made my torture, so the moment's relief from it sufficed for my rapture.

But I had a cause for disquiet less acute but less varying than jealousy.
Despite Lilian's recovery from the special illness which had more immediately absorbed my care, I remained perplexed as to its cause and true nature.

To her mother I gave it the convenient epithet of "nervous;" but the epithet did not explain to myself all the symptoms I classified by it.