“If there was anything real in it,” she reflected, “Cornelia would have talked about him; and that she has never done.”  Then she began to remember, with pride, the very sensible behaviour of her own lover.  “My Athanase,” she reflected, “did not give me an hour’s rest until we were engaged.  He insisted on talking to father about our marriage settlements and our future—­in fact, he made of love a thing possible and practical.  A lover like Joris Hyde is not, I think, very fortunate.”

She did not understand that the quality of love in its finest revelation desires, after its first sweet inception, a little period of withdrawal—­ it wonders at its strange happiness—­broods over it—­is fearful of disturbing emotions so exquisite—­prefers the certainty of its delicious suspense to a more definite understanding, and finds a keen strange delight in its own poignant anxieties and hopes.  These are the birth pangs of an immortal love—­of a love that knows within itself, that it is born for Eternity, and need not to hurry the three-score-and-ten years of time to a consummation.

Of such noble lineage was the love of Cornelia for Joris Hyde.  His gracious, beautiful youth, seemed a part of her own youth; his ardent, tender glances had filled her heart with a sweet trouble that she did not understand.  It was the most natural thing in the world that she should wish to be apart; that she should desire to brood over feelings so strangely happy; and that in this very brooding they should grow to the perfect stature of a luminous and unquenchable affection.

Joris was moved by a sentiment of the same kind, though in a lesser degree.  The masculine desire to obtain, and the delightful consciousness that he possessed, at least, the tremendous advantage of asking for the love he craved, roused him from the sweet torpor to which delicious, dreamy love had inclined him.

“I have thought of Cornelia long enough,” he said one delightful summer morning; “with all my soul I now long to see her.  And it is not an impossible thing I desire.  In short, there is some way to compass it.”  Then a sudden, invincible persuasion of success came to him; he believed in his own good fortune; he had a conviction that the very stars connived with a true lover to work his will.  And under this enthusiasm he galloped into town, took his horse to a stable, and then walked towards Maiden Lane.

In a few moments he saw Arenta Van Ariens.  She was in a mist of blue and white, with flowing curls, and fluttering ribbons; and a general air of happiness.  He placed himself directly in her path, and doffed his beaver to the ground as she approached.

“Well, then,” she cried, with an affected air of astonishment, “who would have thought of seeing you?  Your retirement is the talk of the town.”

“And pray what does the town say?”

“Some part of it says you have lost your fortune at cards; another part says you have lost your heart and got no compensation for it.  ’Tis strange to see the folly of young people of this age,” she added, with a little pretended sigh of superior wisdom.