“I fear, Dorothy, that I have given you too much ‘vent,’ as you call it,” said John.

“No, no,” she replied.  “That was nothing.  My great vent is that I can pour out my love upon you, John, without stint.  Now that I know you are mine, I have some one whom I can deluge with it.  Do you know, John, I believe that when God made me He collected together the requisite portions of reason, imagination, and will,—­there was a great plenty of will, John,—­and all the other ingredients that go to make a human being.  But after He had gotten them all together there was still a great space left to be filled, and He just threw in an immensity of love with which to complete me.  Therefore, John, am I not in true proportion.  There is too much love in me, and it wells up at times and overflows my heart.  How thankful I should be that I may pour it upon you and that it will not be wasted.  How good you are to give me the sweet privilege.”

“How thankful should I be, Dorothy.  I have never known you till this night.  I am unworthy—­”

“Not another word of that sort, John,” she interrupted, covering his mouth with her hand.

They stood for a long time talking a deal of celestial nonsense which I shall not give you.  I fear I have already given you too much of what John and Dorothy did and said in this very sentimental interview.  But in no other way can I so well make you to know the persons of whom I write.  I might have said Dorothy was so and so, and John was such and such.  I might have analyzed them in long, dull pages of minute description; but it is that which persons do and say that gives us true concept of their characters; what others say about them is little else than a mere statement that black is black and white is white.  But to my story again.

Dorothy by her beauty had won John’s admiration when first he beheld her.  When he met her afterward, her charms of mind and her thousand winsome ways moved him deeply.  But upon the evening of which I am now telling you he beheld for the first time her grand burning soul, and he saw her pure heart filled to overflowing with its dangerous burden of love, right from the hands of God Himself, as the girl had said.  John was of a coarser fibre than she who had put him up for her idol; but his sensibilities were keen, and at their awakening he saw clearly the worth of the priceless treasure which propitious fate had given him in the love of Dorothy, and he sat humbly at her feet.  Yet she knew it not, but sat humbly at John’s feet the happiest woman in all the world because of her great good fortune in having a demi-god upon whom she could lavish the untold wealth of her heart.  If you are a woman, pray God that He may touch your eyes with Dorothy’s blessed blindness.  There is a heaven in the dark for you, if you can find it.

I must leave the scene, though I am loath to do so.  Seldom do we catch a glimpse of a human soul, and more seldom still does it show itself like a gust of God’s breath upon the deep of eternity as it did that night in Dorothy.