Denial and Defeat

"Julia!" I exclaimed when we met, "I have come to make atonement.
I feel how rude I have been, but that was only because I was very
wretched."

"Wretched, Edward!" she exclaimed with some surprise. "What should
make you wretched?"

"You--you have made me wretched."

"Me!" Her surprise naturally increased "Yes, you, dear Julia, and you only."

I took her hand in mine. Mine was burning--hers was colder than the
icicles. Need I say more to those who comprehend the mysteries of
the youthful heart. Need I say that the tongue once loosed, and
the declaration of the soul must follow in a rush from the lips.
I told her how much I loved her;--how unhappy it made me to think
that others might bear away the prize; that, in this way, my rudeness
arose from my wretchedness, and my wretchedness only from my love.
I did not speak in vain. She confessed an equal feeling, and we
were suffered a brief hour of unmitigated happiness together.

Surely there is no joy like that which the heart feels in the first
moment when it gives utterance to its own, and hears the avowed
passion of the desired object:--a pure flame, the child of sentiment,
just blushing with the hues of passion, just budding with the
breath and bloom of life. No sin has touched the sentiment;--no
gross smokes have risen to involve and obscure the flame; the altar
is tended by pure hands; white spirits; and there is no reptile
beneath the fresh blossoming flowers which are laid thereon. The
grosser passions sleep, like the fumes at the shrine of Apollo,
beneath the spell of that master passion in whose presence they
can only maintain a subordinate existence. I loved; I had told
my love;--and I was loved in return. I trembled with the deep
intoxication of that bewildering moment; and how I found my way
back to my office--whom I saw on the way, or to whom I spoke, I know
not. I loved;--I was beloved. He only can conceive the delirium of
this sweet knowledge who has passed a life like mine--who has felt
the frowns and the scorn, and the contempt of those who should
have nurtured him with smiles--whose soul, ardent and sensitive,
has been made to recoil cheerlessly back on itself--denied the
sunshine of the affections, and almost forbade to hope. Suddenly,
when I believed myself most destitute, I had awakened to fortune--to
the realization of desires which were beyond my fondest dreams. I,
whom no affection hitherto had blessed, had, in a moment, acquired
that which seemed to me to comprise all others, and for which all
others might have been profitably thrown away.