Page:Ethel Churchill 1.pdf/127

Rh is so essentially feminine; but the manner in which she received his acknowledgements was much: there was an embarrassment so far beyond the occasion, and a happiness not less obvious because it was rather betrayed than confessed. But Norbourne himself loved, and love has a ready sympathy with love. Love is a new intelligence entered into the being: it is the softest, but the most subtle light; in all experience it deceives itself; but how many truths does it teach,—how much knowledge does it impart! It makes us alive to a thousand feelings, of whose very existence, till then, we had not dreamed. The poet's page has a new magic: we comprehend all that had before seemed graceful exaggeration; we now find that poetry falls short of what it seeks to express; and we take a new delight in the musical language that seems made for tenderness. Even into philosophy is carried the deeper truth of the heart—and how many inconsistencies are at once understood! We grow