Page:Romance & Reality 1.pdf/216

210 look into his face was impossible. Ah! there is no look so suspicious as a downcast one. Emily was now in the happiest period of love—perhaps its only happy one; she felt a keener sense of enjoyment, a pleasure in trifles, a reliance on the present; her step was more buoyant, her laugh more glad; she felt a desire to be kind to all around, and her nature seemed all gaiety but for its sweetness. "Love's first steps are upon the rose," says the proverb—"its second finds the thorn." Like the maiden of the fairy tale, we destroy our spell when we open it to examine in what characters it is written. In its ignorance is its happiness; there is none of the anxiety that is the fever of hope—no fears, for there is no calculation—no selfishness, for it asks for nothing—no disappointment, for nothing is expected: it is like the deep quiet enjoyment of basking in the bright sunshine, without thinking of either how the glad warmth will ripen our fruits and flowers, or how the dark clouds in the distance forebode a storm. I doubt whether this morning twilight of the affections has the same extent of duration and influence in man that it has in woman; the necessity of exertion for attainment has been