was not with any intention of publicity, but furtively, as if a private dread hung over us, or as if we thought it pleasanter to vail our feelings from observation. We understood each other in silent looks, which we supposed to be unintelligible to every body else; she seemed to avoid, designedly, all appearance of interest in me, and sometimes played the part to such admiration, as to give me not a few passing pangs of doubt and uneasiness; and I, seeing how scrupulous she was on that point, and not choosing to incur rude jests at her expense, was equally unwilling to betray a feeling which was rendered the more delicious by secrecy. We imagined ourselves secure; but neither of us could have had much worldly sagacity or we must have known that all our caution was fruitless. Basilisks' eyes were around us, and we trod a path beset with serpents. Fortunately we were both looked up to as persons who could not be approached with familiarity; and that preserved us from the open badinage to which others, in similar circumstances, might have been subjected.
Alone, and liberated from this vexatious surveillance, we gave free vent to our thoughts. The suddenness of our new confidence, and the rapidity with which we already shaped its issues, bewildered us by the intensity of the emotions that came crowding for speech and explanation. Astræa sometimes had misgivings, although she never knew how to give them a definite form. One day she said to me, "We are wrong in giving way to this feeling. It is not a love likely to procure us peace. I say this to you because I feel it – perhaps, because I know it; but I confess myself unable to argue upon a question upon which my reason, my whole being is held in suspense. I say so, simply because I ought to say so, and not because I am prepared of myself to act, or even to advise. I am like a leaf in a tempest, and can not guide myself. I yield to the irresistible power that has swept me from the firm land, and deprived me of the strength to regain it."
I fancied that this left me but one course to take, and I replied, "We have pronounced our destiny, Astræa, for good or for evil. We ought to have no choice but to abide by it. If you do not fail in your faith, mine is irrevocable."
At these words she looked gravely at me, and answered,
"My faith dies with me. It is a part of my life. It was not taken up in an hour, to be as lightly thrown aside. Without it, life would be insupportable; with it, life in any shape of seclusion, privation, banishment, contains all the blessings I covet upon earth. It was not for that, or of that I spoke. Understand me clearly, and put no construction on my words outside their plain and ordinary meaning. All I ask, all that is necessary for me is your society; to hear you speak, to drink in the words of kindness and power that flow from your lips, to be ever near you, to tend, solace, and console you. I should be content to enjoy the privilege of seeing that you were happy, without even aspiring to the higher glory of creating happiness for you. That is my nature – capable of a wider range, and a loftier flight, but happiest in its devotion. In any capacity I will serve you – and feel that the servitude of love is dominion!"
So firm and constant was the character of Astræa, tinged with a romantic inspiration, that all this homage was serious and real, and issued gravely from her heart through her lips. She meant every syllable she spoke in its true sense; and I felt that she was ready to fulfill it, and sustain it to the end. She believed that all endurances were possible for love's sake, and that she could even enact miracles of stoicism in the strength of her fidelity.
For many months our intercourse, always thus sophisticating its aims and interpretations, was carried on in secret. We had become necessary to each other; but being still shut up in our mystery, we had not made as much advance toward any definite result as one single moment of disclosure to the people we were among would have inevitably compelled us to decide upon. We were very prudent in our outward bearing, and hardly aware of the avidity with which the concealed passion was devouring our hearts.
The dwarf followed me, and hovered about me more than ever. But I learned to bear with him on account of his being in the house with Astræa. Any body who was constantly in her society, and admitted to terms of intimacy with her, was welcome to me – as relics from the altar of a saint are welcome to the devotee, or a leaf snatched, from a tree in the haunts of home is welcome to the exile. It was a pleasure when I met him even to ask for Astræa, to have an excuse for uttering her name, or to hear him speak of her, or to speak of her myself, or to talk of any thing that we had before talked of together. Such are the resources, the feints, the stratagems, the foibles of love!
VI
One night my indefatigable Mephistophiles took me to a tavern. He was in a vagrant mood, and I indulged him.
"Come, we shall see life to-night," he said.
"With all my heart," I replied. It was not much to my taste, but I fancied there was something unusual in his manner, and my curiosity was awakened to see what it would lead to.
We entered a bustling and brilliantly-lighted house. Numerous guests were scattered about at different tables, variously engaged in getting rid of time at the smallest possible cost of reflection. The dwarf sauntered through the room, whispered a waiter, and, beckoning me to follow, led the way up-stairs to a lesser apartment, where we found ourselves alone.
"You will not see much life here," I observed, rather surprised at his selection of a secluded room in preference to the lively salon through which we had just passed.
"We can make our own life," he answered, with a sarcastic twinge of the mouth, "and imagine more things in five minutes than we should see or hear below in a month."
I thought this very odd. It looked as if he had some concealed motive; but I acquiesced in his notion, and was secretly pleased, not less at the exchange of the din and riot for ease and quietness, than at the opportunity it opened to him for the free play of the humor, whatever it was, that I could plainly see was working upon him.
We drank freely – that was a great resource with him when he was in a mood of extravagance – talked rapidly about a chaos of things, laughed loudly, and in the pauses of the strange revel relapsed every now and then into silence and abstraction. During these brief and sudden intervals, the dwarf would amuse himself by drawing uncouth lines on the table, with his head hanging over them, as if his thoughts were elsewhere engaged, and the unintelligible pastime of his fingers were resorted to only to hide them.
I could not tell why it was, but I felt uneasy and restless. My companion appeared to me like a man who was mentally laboring at some revelation, yet did not know how to begin it. He was constantly talking at something that was evidently troubling his mind, yet he still evaded his own purpose, as if he did not like the task to which he had set himself. Throughout the whole time he never mentioned Astræa's name, and this circumstance gave me additional cause for suspicion.
At last, summoning up all his energy, and fixing himself with the points of his elbows on the table, and his long, wiry hands, which looked like talons, stretched up into his elfin hair at each side of his face, while his eyes, shooting out their malignant fires, were riveted upon me to scan the effect of what he was about to say, he suddenly exclaimed,
"You have been remarked in your attentions to Astræa."
The mystery was out. And what was there in it, after all? I was a free agent, and so was Astræa. Why should he make so much theatrical parade about so very simple a business?
"Well!" I exclaimed, scarcely able to repress a smile, which the exaggerated earnestness of his manner excited.
"Well! You acknowledge that it is so?"
"Acknowledge? Why should I either acknowledge or deny it? There is no treason in it; the lady is the best judge – let me add, the only judge – of any attentions I may have paid to her."
"But I say you have been remarked – it has been spoken of – it is already a common topic of conversation."
"Indeed!
