foot had never ventured. That her aunt should point to a certain masculine form, no matter how attractive or interesting, and say, “Love and home are the lot of women,” made her blood rush back on her heart, like a stream from which a dam has been ruthlessly wrenched away. It was too wild, too sudden; a friend’s name was so much easier to speak, or to contemplate. She did not know what to do with her own heart, made to speak thus before its time; its beatings choked her; everything choked her; this was a worse imprisonment than the other. Looking round, her eye fell upon the flowers. Ah, was not their language expressive enough, without this new suggestion? They seemed to lose something in this very gain. She liked them less she thought, and yet her feet drew near, and near, and nearer, to where they stood, exhaling their very souls out in delicious perfume. “I am too young!” came from Paula’s lips. “I will not think of it!” quickly followed. Yet the smile with which she bent over the fragrant blossoms, had an ethereal beauty in it, which was not all unmixed with the
“Light that never was on land or sea, The consecration and the poet’s dream.”
“He has asked to be my friend,” murmured she, as she slowly turned away. “It is enough; it must be enough.” But the blossom she had stolen from the midst of the fragrant collection, seemed to whisper a merry nay, as it nodded against her hand, and afterwards gushed out its sweet life on her pure young breast.