Gotleib was charmed with the maiden’s thoughts.  Oh, yes—­her flowers were already flying over his highest branches.  She soared above him, and through her heavenly truths were growing clearer to him.  How grateful he was to his Heavenly Father, that from his own bosom, as it were, was born his spirit’s companion.  But her life was from God—­and how holy was her whole being to him!  She was enthroned in his inmost heart, to be for ever treasured as the highest and best gift of God.

It was evening when he next stood beside her.  The mother slept, and Anna and Gotleib stood in the moonlit window.  Few, and softly whispered, were his loving words to her.  But she smiled in a oneness of thought, when he said,

“In heaven, the sun shone upon us; upon earth the cold moonbeams unite us; but the sunshine will soon come again.”

Anna felt that her letter had made Gotleib very happy; and she bent her head lovingly on his manly breast.  Oh! to him, the desolate forlorn one, how thrilling was the first caress of the maiden!  His lips touched her soft white brows with a delicious new joy.  But brow, eyes, cheeks, and lips, were soon covered with rapturous kisses.

Ah! happy youth and maiden, thus bedewed with life’s nectar of blessedness!  What are earth’s sorrows to you?  Heaven is in you, and eternity only can satisfy the infinite desires of such hearts.

But as the days passed, the material body of the mother wasted away, and her spirit was growing bright in its coming glory.  She wished much to see her beloved Anna in a holy marriage union before she left this world.  So a few weeks after the betrothal, Gotleib led his bride to the marriage altar.  It was a festive scene of the heart’s happiness even beside the bed of death.  Madame Hendrickson felt that she, too, was adorning for a beautiful bridal—­and earthly care being thus removed from her heart, she was altogether happy.

And the good, true-hearted Anna, in white bridal garments and virgin innocence, looked to the loving mother and happy Gotleib like an angel of God.  Even the Professor Eberhard thought thus, and quite certain it is, that the good minister spoke as if a heavenly inspiration flowed into him, as he bound the two into an eternal oneness of being.  “Little children!” said he, “love one another! was the teaching of the great God, as he walked upon the earth.  Hence love is the holy of the holies.  And it flows from God even as heat flows from the material sun—­and as the sun is in its own heat and light, so God is in love.”

And taking the marriage ring, he placed it on the soft, white, rose-tipped finger of the bride, and said,

“How beautiful and expressive is this symbol of union, showing the conjunction of good and truth, which conjunction first exists in the Lord, for His love is the inmost, and His wisdom is like the golden bond of truth encasing and protecting love.  And this love of the Lord flowing into man is received, protected, and guarded by woman’s truth, until, in her fitness and perfect adaptation to him, she becomes the love of the wisdom of the man’s love, and the twain are no longer two, but one.”