Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/781

1858.] day is an expectation; her demand looks out of proud eyes. Can he move this stately creature, pure and high above him as the clear moon yonder, never turning from her course,—this Diana, who will love upward and stoop to no Endymion? Now it will appear whether he can pass with another for all he is to himself. This will be the victory for which he was born, or blackest defeat. If she could love him! If he should, after all, be to her only such another as her cousin Thomas, who comes and goes with all his pretensions as unregarded as Rover the house-dog! Between these ifs he vacillates, swung like a ship on stormy waters, touching heaven and hell.

Meanwhile the maiden dares hardly look toward this generous new-comer, whose destiny lies broad open in his courage and desire. Others she could conciliate and gently allure, but she will not play with the lion. She will throw no web around his strength to tear her heart away, if it does not hold him. For the first time she guards her fancy. She will not think of the career that awaits him, of the help there is in him for men, and the honor that will follow him from them,—of the high studies, tasks, and companionship to which he is hastening. What avails this avoidance, this turning-away of the head? A fancy that must be kept is already lost. She read his quality in the first glance of deep-meaning eyes. When at last he speaks, she sees suddenly how beyond all recovery he had carried away her soul in that glance. They marry each the expectation of the other. It was a promise in either that shone so fair. Happy lovers, if only as wife and husband they can go on to fulfil the promise! For love cannot be repeated; every day it must have fresh food in a new object; and unless character is renewed, love must leave it behind and wander on.

If the wife is still aspiring,—if she lays growing demands on her hero,—if her thought enlarges and she stands true to it, separate from him in integrity as he saw her first, following not his, but her own native estimate,—she will always be his mistress. She will still have that charm of remoteness which belongs only to those who do not lean and borrow, to natures centred for themselves in the deep. There is something incalculable in such independence. It is full of surprise for the most intimate. In one breast the true wife prepares for her husband a course of loves. Every day she offers a new heart to be won. Every day the woman he could reach is gone, and there again before him is the inaccessible maiden who will not accept to-day the behavior of yesterday. This withdrawal and advancement from height to height is true virginity, which never lies down with love but keeps him always on foot and girded for fresh pursuit. Noble lovers rely on no pledges, point to no past engagements, but prefer to renew their relation from hour to hour. The heroic woman will command, and not solicit love. Let him go, when I cease to be all to him, when I can no longer fill the horizon of his imagination and satisfy his heart. But if there is less ascension in a woman, she is no mate for an advancing man. He must leave her; he walks by her side alone. So we pass many dear companions, outgrowing alike our loves and our fears.

Once or twice in youth we meet a man of sounding reputation or real wisdom, whose secret is hid above our discovery. His manners are formidable while we do not understand them. In his presence our tongues are tied, our limbs are paralyzed. Thought dies out before him, the will is unseated and vacillates, we are cowed like Antony beside Cæsar. In solitude we are ashamed of this cowardice and resolve to put it away; but when the great man returns, our knees knock and we are as weak as before. It is suicide to fly from such mortification. A brave boy faces it as well as he can. By-and-by the dazzle abates, he sees some flaw, some coarseness or softness, in this shining piece of metal; he begins to fathom the motives and measure the orbit of this tyrannous benefactor. They are the true