an equal degree.  Was she not displaying it?  The worthy people of the company stared, as she now perceived, and she was indifferent; her relatives were present without disturbing her exaltation.  She wheeled above their heads in the fiery chariot beside her sun-god.  It could not but be courage, active courage, superior to her previous tentative steps—­the verbal temerities she had supposed so dauntless.  For now she was in action, now she was being tried to match the preacher and incarnation of the virtues of action!

Alvan shaped a comparison of her with Paris, his beloved of cities—­the symbolized goddess of the lightning brain that is quick to conceive, eager to realize ideas, impassioned for her hero, but ever putting him to proof, graceful beyond all rhyme, colloquial as never the Muse; light in light hands, yet valiant unto death for a principle; and therefore not light, anything but light in strong hands, very stedfast rather:  and oh! constantly entertaining.

The comparison had to be strained to fit the living lady’s shape.  Did he think it, or a dash of something like it?

His mood was luxurious.  He had found the fair and youthful original woman of refinement and station desired by him.  He had good reason to wish to find her.  Having won a name, standing on firm ground, with promise of a great career, chief of what was then taken for a growing party and is not yet a collapsed, nor will be, though the foot on it is iron, his youth had flown under the tutelage of an extraordinary Mentor, whom to call Athene robs the goddess of her personal repute for wisdom in conduct, but whose head was wise, wise as it was now grey.  Verily she was original; and a grey original should seem remarkable above a blooming blonde.  If originality in woman were our prime request, the grey should bear the palm.  She has gone through the battle, retaining the standard she carried into it, which is a victory.  Alas, that grey, so spirit-touching in Art, should be so wintry in reality!

The discovery of a feminine original breathing Spring, softer, warmer than the ancient one, gold instead of snowcrested, and fully as intrepid as devoted, was an immense joy to Alvan.  He took it luxuriously because he believed in his fortune, a kind of natal star, the common heritage of the adventurous, that brought him his good things in time, in return for energetic strivings in a higher direction apart from his natural longings.

Fortune had delayed, he had wintered long.  All the sweeter was the breath of the young Spring.  That exquisite new sweetness robed Clotilde in the attributes of the person dreamed of for his mate; and deductively assuming her to possess them, he could not doubt his power of winning her.  Barriers are for those who cannot fly.  The barriers were palpable about a girl of noble Christian birth:  so was the courage in her which would give her wings, he thought, coming to that judgement through the mixture of his knowledge of himself and his perusal of her exterior.  He saw that she could take an impression deeply enough to express it sincerely, and he counted on it, sympathetically endowing her with his courage to support the originality she was famed for.