"I can't tell," said Anne, bitterly. "I never did love any one better than you,—that's the trouble."

"Neither do I love anybody better than you, Anne. The love I have for you is a whole, perfect thing, just as it was. See if you do not find me every way as devoted. My heart was only opened to take in another love, another wholly different; and which, because it is so wholly different, never can infringe on the love I bear to you. And, Anne, my dear sister, if you could love her as a part of me"—

"I wish I could," said Anne, somewhat softened; "but what I've heard has been so unfavorable! She is not, in the least, the person I should have expected you to fancy, Edward. Of all things I despise a woman who trifles with the affections of gentlemen."

"Well, but, my dear, Nina isn't a woman; she is a child—a gay, beautiful, unformed child; and I'm sure you may apply to her what Pope says:—

'If to her share some female errors fall,

Look in her face, and you forget them all.'"

"Yes, indeed," said Anne, "I believe all you men are alike—a pretty face bewitches any of you. I thought you were an exception, Edward; but there you are."

"But, Anne, is this the way to encourage my confidence? Suppose I am bewitched and enchanted, you cannot disentangle me without indulgence. Say what you will about it, the fact is just this—it is my fate to love this child. I've tried to love many women before. I have seen many whom I knew no sort of reason why I shouldn't love,—handsomer far, more cultivated, more accomplished,—and yet I've seen them without a movement or a flutter of the pulse. But this girl has awakened all there is to me. I do not see in her what the world sees. I see the ideal image of what she can be, what I'm sure she will be, when her nature is fully awakened and developed."

"Just there, Edward—just that," said Anne. "You never see anything; that is, you see a glorified image—a something that might, could, would, or should be—that is your difficulty. You glorify an ordinary boarding-school coquette into something symbolic, sublime; you clothe her with all your own ideas, and then fall down to worship her."

"Well, my dear Anne, suppose it were so, what then? I am, as you say, ideal,—you, real. Well, be it so; I must act according to what is in me. I have a right to my nature, you to yours. But it is not every person whom I can idealize; and I suspect this is the great reason why I never could love some very fine women, with whom I have associated on intimate terms; they had no capacity of being idealized; they could receive no color from my fancy; they wanted, in short, just what Nina has. She is just like one of those little whisking, chattering cascades in the White Mountains, and the atmosphere round her is favorable to rainbows."