“And yet, no; you are the angel-woman; there will always be a greater charm in the expression of your feelings, more harmony in your voice, more grace in your smile, more purity in your looks than in mine.  Let me feel that you are the creature of a higher sphere than that I live in; it will be your pride to have descended from it; mine, that I should have deserved you; and you will not perhaps have fallen too far by coming down to me in my poverty and misery.  Nay, if a woman’s most glorious refuge is in a heart that is wholly her own, you will always reign supreme in mine.  Not a thought, not a deed, shall ever pollute this heart, this glorious sanctuary, so long as you vouchsafe to dwell in it —­and will you not dwell in it for ever?  Did you not enchant me by the words, ‘Now and for ever?’ Nunc et semper!  And I have written these words of our ritual below your portrait—­words worthy of you, as they are of God.  He is nunc et semper, as my love is.

“Never, no, never, can I exhaust that which is immense, infinite, unbounded—­and such is the feeling I have for you; I have imagined its immeasurable extent, as we measure space by the dimensions of one of its parts.  I have had ineffable joys, whole hours filled with delicious meditation, as I have recalled a single gesture or the tone of a word of yours.  Thus there will be memories of which the magnitude will overpower me, if the reminiscence of a sweet and friendly interview is enough to make me shed tears of joy, to move and thrill my soul, and to be an inexhaustible wellspring of gladness.  Love is the life of angels!

“I can never, I believe, exhaust my joy in seeing you.  This rapture, the least fervid of any, though it never can last long enough, has made me apprehend the eternal contemplation in which seraphs and spirits abide in the presence of God; nothing can be more natural, if from His essence there emanates a light as fruitful of new emotions as that of your eyes is, of your imposing brow, and your beautiful countenance—­the image of your soul.  Then, the soul, our second self, whose pure form can never perish, makes our love immortal.  I would there were some other language than that I use to express to you the ever-new ecstasy of my love; but since there is one of our own creating, since our looks are living speech, must we not meet face to face to read in each other’s eyes those questions and answers from the heart, that are so living, so penetrating, that one evening you could say to me, ‘Be silent!’ when I was not speaking.  Do you remember it, dear life?

“When I am away from you in the darkness of absence, am I not reduced to use human words, too feeble to express heavenly feelings?  But words at any rate represent the marks these feelings leave in my soul, just as the word God imperfectly