Presentiments

Without apprehending the extent of my own weakness, the forms that
it would take, or the tyrannies that it would inflict, I was still
not totally uninformed on the subject of my peculiar character;
and, fearing then rather that I might pain my wife by some of its
wanton demonstrations, than that she would ever furnish me with,
an occasion for them, I took an opportunity, a few evenings after
our marriage, to suggest to her the necessity of regarding my
outbreaks with an indulgent eye.

My heart had been singularly softened by the most touching
associations. We sat together in our piazza, beneath a flood of
the richest and balmiest moonlight, screened only from its silvery
blaze by interposing masses of the woodbine, mingled with shoots
of oleander, arbor-vitae, and other shrub-trees. The mild breath
of evening sufficed only to lift quiveringly their green leaves
and glowing blossoms, to stir the hair upon our cheeks, and give
to the atmosphere that wooing freshness which seems so necessary
a concomitant of the moonlight. The hand of Julia was in mine.
There were few words spoken between us; love has its own sufficing
language, and is content with that consciousness that all is right
which implores no other assurances. Julia had just risen from the
piano: we had both been touched with a deeper sense of the thousand
harmonies in nature, by listening to those of Rossini; and now,
gazing upon some transparent, fleecy, white clouds that were slowly
pressing forward in the path of the moonlight, as if in duteous
attendance upon some maiden queen, our mutual minds were busied
in framing pictures from the fine yet fantastic forms that glowed,
gathering on our gaze. I felt the hand of Julia trembling in my
own. Her head sank upon my shoulder; I felt a warm drop fall from
her eyes upon my hand, and exclaimed-"Julia, you weep! wherefore do you weep, dear wife?"