The true
voice of her love she will keep back long and late, fearful ever of her
most prized jewel,--fearful to strange sensitiveness; she will show
kindness, but the opening of the real floodgates of the heart, and the
utterance of those impassioned yearnings which belong to its nature,
come far later. And fearful, thrice fearful is the shock, if these flow
out unmet!
That deep, thrilling voice, bearing all the perfume of the womanly soul
in its flow, rarely finds utterance; and if uttered vainly,--if called
out by tempting devices, and by a trust that is abused,--desolate indeed
is the maiden heart, widowed of its chastest thought! The soul shrinks
affrighted within itself. Like a tired bird lost at sea, fluttering
around what seem friendly boughs, it stoops at length, and finding only
cold, slippery spars, with no bloom and no foliage,--its last hope
gone,--it sinks to a wild ocean grave!
Nelly--and the thought brings a tear of sympathy to your eye--must have
such a heart; it speaks in every shadow of her action. And this very
delicacy seems to lend her a charm that would make her a wife to be
loved and honored.
Ay, there is something in that maidenly modesty--retiring from you as
you advance, retreating timidly from all bold approaches, fearful and
yet joyous--which wins upon the iron hardness of a man's nature like a
rising flame.
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