University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

It may be readily imagined that my indifference, from that
instant, disappeared. I was now all eyes and ears and devoted
attention. I drank in every sound, watched every expression,
and was ready to believe any extravagance which the public
enthusiasm might exhibit or express. She was triumphant in
her performances that night. She was said, by the critics, even
to have surpassed herself. Opinion had but one voice, and that
was admiration; feeling but one emotion, and that was love. She

was, indeed, a most lovely creature. Her form, which I now
beheld entire, and in a perfect light, for the first time, was one,
harmoniously rounded into grace, whose every movement seemed
to swell into expression. She looked admirably the character
she played—for the time she was—one of those sylphs of the
moonlight and the sea, which breathed in poetic spirituality from
the works of the ancient masters of English romance. Nor was
the intellectual spirituality of her appearance, lessened by the
unvarying sadness which prevailed upon her countenance,—
a sadness not unfitly suited to the looks of a being otherwise
pure and designing to be so,—born for heaven, and ultimately
secure of it, but whom, a single, sad lapse, has banished into short
but painful exile from its bright and blessing abodes.

I cannot say that I listened to, or even heard, the music. The
seat which I occupied was in the pit, and so near to the footlights
—the orchestra being between, that I could note every change in
the expression of her face. I may have deceived myself, but I
certainly fancied, that she at length saw mine. If she did, she
read a volume in the quivering of my lip—in the tearful admiration
of my eye. There was one period in her performance when
I know that she beheld me. She had advanced to the outer edge
of the procenium in obedience to the action of the piece. My
emotions had been gaining strength for a considerable time before.
Heedless of the impropriety I had risen from my seat, and without
a consciousness of my folly until forcibly drawn back to my
place by some one behind me, my motion towards the stage had
corresponded entirely with hers. The good people ascribed to a
music frenzy the absurdity of my conduct. But she—she knew
better; she saw the movement of my person—she beheld the
outstretched action of my hand, and never could intelligence like
hers, mistake the unequivocal language in my eye. Her countenance
changed on the instant—I could see that, though I could
see little else—her cheeks became flushed, her lips trembled and
her voice for the first time faltered as she sung, while her eye
was fixed upon me with a tearful but sweet intensity of gaze.

Let it be remembered that I was little more than a boy at this
period—that I had seen very little of the witchery of dramatic
representation—that I had no sort of suspicion of guile in the
heart of one, who could personate innocence and grief quite as
truly as her own form and features personated loveliness—that I
looked upon the ideal in all things, and knew nothing of the real;
and believed that truth was an undoubted presence, for ever
manifested where it was professed. To those who have been
once young, I need not undertake to account for this confidence
in the humanities—to those who are still young, there will be no
need for me to make any such attempt. Enough that I looked,
listened and believed. I will not say that I loved. I am not sure
that there is any passion in the heart of man worthy of the name

of love, until the character is fixed by experience, and the heart
subdued by some degree of suffering. Perhaps it will be quite
enough to admit that my passions were active—my sensibilities
—without referring to any more subtle influence.